[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 120 (Monday, September 10, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H5749-H5754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Woodall). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr.
Courtney) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Here we are today on September 10, 5 weeks since Speaker Boehner
pushed
[[Page H5750]]
through a motion to recess for 5 weeks at a time when our Nation faces
so many challenges, so many ticking clocks in terms of must-do items,
some of which have already cleared the U.S. Senate, like the farm bill.
And yet despite that need out there from the country, looking for some
action and certainty out of this Chamber, the majority again said,
Nope. We're going home for 5 weeks. And we're going to leave dairy
farmers whose price supports expired on August 31 left hanging in the
breeze--despite the fact that the U.S. Senate has passed a farm bill
with Dairy Security Act provisions that reforms the price structure,
saves the taxpayer money, and provides some horizon so that the folks
who are getting up every morning and milking cows could have some
certainty in terms of whether or not their business, their operations,
have any sense of future.
They are losing money every day in New England. The feed costs, the
high energy costs. And the Dairy Security Act, which was part of the
Senate farm bill, and by the way was also incorporated in the House
Agriculture Committee in its committee bill, will, in fact, provide
that sense of security and future for dairy farmers. Yet the Speaker
put through a motion to recess for 5 weeks.
August 31 has come and gone, and these guys and women are out there
and they are faced with total fear, and those are the faces that I saw
when I was home in August about the fact that this Congress,
particularly the House of Representatives controlled by the
Republicans, refused to take up a farm bill despite the fact that we
had weeks of time to do it before the expiration of the price supports
for dairy farmers.
Obviously, American agriculture is far broader than just the dairy
industry. It also includes commodity crops in the great Midwest, which
are facing a historic drought right now where the security of crop
insurance is so important.
Joining me here this evening to report in from the Midwest is a great
Congressman from eastern Iowa, my colleague and friend, Congressman
Bruce Braley, and I would like to yield to him to talk about what the
lack of a farm bill means in your great State.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I thank my friend for yielding.
The thing that I think we need to focus on at the beginning is 62
days. It's been 62 days since the House Agriculture Committee reported
a strong, bipartisan farm bill that passed out of committee after
extensive debate and numerous amendments, and that's on the heel of the
Senate Ag Committee passing a farm bill with strong bipartisan support,
that passed the entire Senate where it's incredibly difficult to pass
anything these days with a strong bipartisan vote.
So I think the question on the minds of many of my constituents in
Iowa's First District is when is the House going to vote on a farm
bill, which in the past has always been a bipartisan priority of the
House and the Senate.
Now, my district in Iowa has been burning up all summer. Almost every
part of the First District of Iowa has been classified as extreme
drought conditions. Now, what does that mean? Well, I will tell you
what it means to the eye when you go out and visit the farms that I
visited back in the First District in July and August.
Corn that normally fills up an entire ear, and the ear is typically
about this long, now is coming out on ears that are this long that if
you're lucky has a fraction of the kernels per ear that you would
normally see in a typical Iowa cornfield. Stalks of corn were burning
up in July and had to be chopped because they have no value other than
the insurance policy that was in place on those crops because commodity
insurance has been available to those farmers.
Soybeans were more fortunate because they weren't burning up and got
late rain that allowed them to mature, and we're hopeful that the bean
crop will not be as devastated to the extent that the corn is.
This is profound, it's real, it's going to have dramatic implications
for the cost of food in this country, for the cost of fuel in this
country. And while we sit here and do nothing in the House to get a
farm bill reported out into conference committee, farmers back in my
district are looking at what's going to happen this fall when they face
dramatically reduced yields. Then we roll into the period of time this
winter when they're buying crop inputs for next spring. All of these
things have enormous ripple effects on our domestic economy.
Then you look at what's happening with our nutrition programs, which
will also be expiring on September 30. And we know how many people
depend on those nutrition programs. Who are they? Most of them are
seniors, the elderly, who depend on those food stamp programs. It's
people who are disabled and on fixed incomes and working and are
underemployed right now.
So this failure to act is having profound consequences for the people
I represent in Iowa. I have done 14 listening posts on the farm, food,
and jobs bill in Iowa this summer, and we get people from across the
spectrum who will be dramatically impacted if Congress fails to act.
You look at the rural economic development title of the farm bill. It
has profound implications throughout this country, and it's not based
on whether a district is blue or red or purple. Every single district
in this country is impacted by our failure to act.
That's why I'm glad to be here tonight talking about these
implications, and I hope to be bringing to the floor soon a discharge
petition that has been delayed because of the inaction on this bill but
that will give every Member of the House of Representatives the
opportunity to go down and record on a piece of paper whether they want
to see a farm bill brought to the floor for a vote, an up-or-down vote,
and I encourage all of my colleagues to take a serious look at joining
me in signing that discharge petition so we finally get action on the
long overdue piece of legislation.
Mr. COURTNEY. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I'll be happy to yield back to my colleague.
Mr. COURTNEY. I think your last point about the fact that we are now
at a place where the Democratic minority is finding itself in a
position where they really have almost no choice but to seek a
discharge petition.
The fact is is that this week the majority, Speaker Boehner's office
and the House Majority Leader, Congressman Cantor, issued their agenda
for the week which lists the bills that they are proposing to take up
for votes. And for those listening around the country, I think it's
important to remember that the Republican majority controls that
agenda. I mean, that is something that we have no control in our caucus
of adding or subtracting.
Looking at that agenda this week, I was hoping when I got back from
the 5-week break that the Speaker's office would have responded to what
is happening all over the country, which is a hue and cry demanding
action on a farm bill.
But the fact is, as I think the gentleman from Iowa knows, is that
there is nothing on that agenda that indicates we are going to take up
a farm bill this week. Incredible. I mean, just amazing, that, you
know, at a time when the American Farm Bureau has been doing a circuit
throughout the Midwest holding hearings, holding events, drawing
attention to this fact. Even in New England and Connecticut, which is
not viewed as a sort of agriculture powerhouse, I mean the fact is I
had roundtables with the Connecticut Farm Bureau who are just
dumbfounded that an issue like this could get sort of swept up in just
sort of the do-nothing record of the Republican majority in this
Congress.
I also think it's important for people to remember the Senate farm
bill which passed, as the gentleman indicated, on a bipartisan basis
actually saves the taxpayers $23 billion over the next 5 years.
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It came in with a lower cost than the baseline from the last farm
bill, so it actually helps the deficit situation.
The House Agriculture Committee bill that you mentioned that got
reported out also reduces the deficit. Again, I think it went a little
too heavy in terms of the reductions on the nutrition side, but I am
confident that that can get worked out in a conference committee if the
House would take up a bill and send a bill to a conference committee.
[[Page H5751]]
But the fact of the matter is is your leadership, in terms of
bringing out a discharge petition, is probably not something that you
woke up thinking you'd love to do 6 months from now, but it's really an
act of necessity because this majority will not even send a signal that
anything is even being planned to take up a bill this week.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I think the thing that is so disturbing to so
many of us who represent parts of rural America that are heavily
dependent on agriculture is this has never been a partisan stalemate in
the past. Usually, the farm bill bogs down over regional differences
over how you structure a bill that's going to get the necessary support
to get the necessary votes on the floor. There is strong bipartisan
support here in the House among our colleagues.
Earlier, Congressman Welch initiated a Dear Colleague letter--they
got 60 signatures--calling on leadership from both the House Democrats
and Republicans to come together, get this bill to the floor, bring it
for an up-or-down vote so that people get to see who's willing to put
their vote behind crafting a bipartisan bill that can get support and
move this country forward. That's the disturbing thing is I'm confident
that there would be broad support across this Chamber to get a bill on
the floor, to have an amendment process, to allow people to offer
amendments to improve the bill. That's what happens in committee.
That's what happened in this particular case. But when we can't even
get a bill to the floor--and everything we're hearing is that there's
no plan to bring a bill to the floor before the election--and then you
look at everything that's being pushed back into the so-called lame
duck session--which you know, Congressman Courtney, is one of the worst
times to bring people together with everything going on--it's very
frustrating, because this is a bill that could have and should have
been passed before the August recess, and that's why it's so
frustrating.
Mr. COURTNEY. This week, I think we are going to see the impact
outside of the beltway, because it's my understanding that over 30 to
50 groups are going to be converging on Washington, advocates of
American agriculture ranging from the real traditional American Farm
Bureau to the Farmers Union, to specific commodity crop groups who, as
you point out, sometimes have some pretty heated disagreements about
regional issues and about allocations within the farm bill; and they
may still have some today in terms of the way the Senate bill was voted
out in the House committee, but they all agree on one item, which is
that it is time for this House of Representatives to act.
This is not a debate club here that people were sent to, and it's
also not a place where political strategists can sort of play games
with people's lives about how the agenda is handled. I mean, this is a
place where so many sectors of American society depend on us, again, at
the end of the day, rising to our constitutional duty, sometimes having
to really compromise on some very difficult measures, but, nonetheless,
we have a duty to act. We have a duty to really make sure that the
people who sent us here can rely on the fact that we're not here just
to fight and sort of try and get political gain out of every issue that
comes to the floor.
Again, what the Connecticut farmers were saying to me when I was back
home is that they just cannot believe that the farm bill has now become
a partisan issue, but the Republican leadership controlling this House
apparently believes it is. They won't even bring up a bill for a vote.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I think one of the things that's helpful is
to talk about some misconceptions about the farm bill. This isn't just
something that affects farmers. At every one of my farm bill listening
posts, I started off by pointing out that in 1900, my State of Iowa had
11 Members of Congress in the House of Representatives and Florida had
two, and there were about 40 percent of Americans at that time who
lived on farms. After the next election, we will have four
Representatives from my State of Iowa in the House and Florida will
have 28; and now, less than 1\1/2\ percent of the American population
lives on farms. So that illustrates why it's such a big challenge
anymore to put this bill together.
But when you look at who showed up at my farm bill listening post, it
wasn't just people engaged in agriculture. There were plenty of farmers
there. There were representatives from the corn growers, the soybean
producers, the cattlemen, and the pork producers, but there were also
people there from Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, the Sierra Club,
Trout Unlimited. There were people from nutrition groups who were
involved in providing food to underserved portions of the community.
There were people there from school lunch programs impacted. There were
people from rural electric cooperatives who serve not just rural
America today, but even medium- and small-size cities. You had people
there from all these different groups who came together, from energy
groups who were part of the energy title of the farm bill.
Everybody who eats in this country is impacted by what's in this
bill. Everybody who puts fuel in their vehicles is impacted by what's
in this bill. For many people in America, this is one of the most
important economic development bills we pass every 5 years.
The reason we do it every 5 years is because when you're involved in
the types of operations that produce the food, fiber, and fuel we
depend on, you don't just do it on a week-to-week, month-to-month
business plan. You have to know right now what you're going to put in
the ground next spring and what it's going to cost to do it and what
type of risk you're taking on in order to be successful and continue in
that operation.
And so you can't just kick the can down the road--which we are so
good at in this body--and hope it all works out in the end, because for
many farmers that will be too late. That's why it's time to come
together and work in a bipartisan manner to solve this problem and get
it done, because the American people are depending upon us. If we don't
do it until after the election, it's too late.
Mr. COURTNEY. To follow up on that point, one of the aspects of this
farm bill which I think is actually so exciting is that there's a major
reform in terms of how we're going to reduce, to some degree, the
American taxpayers' liability for crop production in this country. We
are definitely eliminating crop subsidies once and for all, direct cash
payments to farms, in both the Senate bill and in the House Agriculture
Committee bill. We are eliminating direct payment subsidies. That's
where the largest portion of savings are actually being generated, the
$23 billion in the Senate and the roughly $33 billion in the House
bill. We are basically going to be using much more of a crop insurance,
risk insurance model where the farmers have a little more skin in the
game. The producer is going to have a little more skin in the game and
the taxpayer is going to have a little less.
From almost every angle, when you look at the hard work that's been
put into the measure this year in terms of, again, lowering costs,
trying to wean the system away from direct cash payments, doing some
important, I think, exciting reforms in terms of promoting farmers'
markets and marketing specialty crops--which, again, I'm sure Iowa is
just like New England and California and other places where there has
just been this renaissance of local agriculture. Food security issues
and the growing awareness about the fact that healthier foods for
school cafeterias or family dinner tables is something that people are
just really engaged in as almost never before.
This farm bill promotes all of that positive change in terms of
nutrition habits all the way to school cafeterias, but also, again,
helping producers deal with a different structure in terms of how their
business model is going to run. As you point out, you can't do that
with a 3-month extension or a 9-month extension or a 12-month
extension. We need a 5-year farm bill. We need something exactly along
the lines of what the Senate produced on a bipartisan basis.
Again, it is just incredible that this leadership, the Republican
leadership, doesn't hear what is out there right now both on the
producer side and on the nutrition side. People want this Congress to
get this item done, and it just should not be a partisan issue.
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Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. One of the other common themes that I heard at
all of my listening tours--and this is uniform across the country,
whether you're living in Connecticut or Iowa or California or any other
part of the country--the average age of the farmers in Iowa is 59, and
we have a lot of people who are nearing the end of their farming
careers. We need to have opportunities for young farmers and young
people who want to get involved in agriculture to get their foot in the
door.
So that's one of the exciting things about this farm bill is, for
young farmers and beginning farmers who may be doing it as a second
career, they may be working at a John Deere factory in Waterloo and
farming on a part-time basis because it's in their blood, it's what
they love the most out of life, but to give people that opportunity to
get started, we have to be focusing on some innovative new ways of
allowing them to earn an income from farming.
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Whether that's specialty crops, which you mentioned earlier, whether
it's dealing with orchards and other types of new and innovative ways
of raising money from production agriculture, all of those things are
at a standstill if this bill doesn't move. And that is one of the
reasons why it's inspiring, at a time when so much that focuses on
Congress is about partisan bickering, that there is actually an
enormous opportunity here to reach across the aisle to our friends on
the other side and say, join us, make this happen, bring this bill to
the floor. We will work with you to improve this bill and get it to a
conference committee so that we can get an up-or-down vote on the
future of agriculture in America.
Mr. COURTNEY. Just to kind of put the period on that is that right
now the House Republican leadership is looking like we've only got 8
days of real, full floor action for the whole month of September.
Again, incredibly, after basically leaving town and passing a motion to
recess, the Republican leadership, now that we're back, has only
scheduled 8 full session days, which, again, really shows why your
discharge petition for the farm bill is so critical in that we really
need to get this thing moving, because there clearly will be a
conference. There's going to be some disagreement with the Senate. But
on the fundamental structure of the bill there really isn't. I mean,
the reform of subsidy payments, there's overlap in both bills.
The savings that that will generate, the dairy issue which I
mentioned earlier, how we are again going from a historic change in
terms of an industry that's had total cash payment subsidies to a risk
insurance model, which, again, commodity crop folks like yours have
dealt with that for decades. We're now putting dairy into that same
model.
But 8 days does not give us much margin for error in terms of the way
this place operates. And again, that's the Republican schedule which
came out.
I know, as far as yourself and myself and our colleagues on our side
of the aisle, you know, we're prepared to roll up our sleeves and stay
here as long as it takes, and frankly, we've got other issues which I
think all of us would be more than happy to plunge into, whether it's
the fiscal cliff, whether its sequestration, whether it's the postal
reform bill, which the Senate has passed, whether it's the Violence
Against Women Act that again, incredibly, even though law enforcement
leaders all across the country are imploring Congress to move on the
Violence Against Women Act, the leadership hasn't set a conference
group to get that bill done.
This is stuff that should be just baseline givens, in terms of just
running the country. And yet we have got an agenda this week which,
other than maybe doing a CR to keep the government from closing on
October 1, that's it in terms of what the Republican leadership has put
forward.
Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I think that one of the things that we need
to make sure everybody understands is, as of September 30, September
30, which is just a couple of weeks away, there is no farm bill. We
revert back to a 1949 farm bill that nobody in this country wants to
see happen, including the Secretary of Agriculture, who would be given
extraordinary powers that were given under that old farm bill to
determine markets, to determine prices, to select winners and losers.
It would be a horrible situation. And that's why the American people
are depending on us to put aside our partisan bickering, to come
together and solve this problem. And that's why I'm looking forward to
working with my Republican colleagues to get support for this discharge
petition and work to get signatures so that we can bring this bill to a
vote on the floor, which is what should have happened before August 1.
Mr. COURTNEY. And it is a shame because really, if you look at the
U.S. economy right now, particularly in terms of balance of trade,
agriculture is probably the brightest spot, even with all the
challenges that have happened this summer. I mean, export of American
farm products, whether it's beef or commodities, is actually really
helping the balance of trade for this country.
There was a story this morning in The New York Times about Mexico,
about how their rising middle class now--I mean, made in America,
particularly for food products, is something that the consumer market
is really stampeding towards.
And again, to allow this September 30 deadline to happen and to
suddenly, you know, have complete almost chaos in terms of pricing
mechanisms, in terms of, again, insurance payments, in terms of cash
payments, which, presumably, would somehow have to continue, really
would hurt growth in this country, which American agriculture has
actually been helping sort of pull up for other sectors.
I want to thank the gentleman for joining me here this evening to
talk about that point.
Again, there was a Bloomberg News report also earlier today that said
that telemarketers now have a higher approval rating than the U.S.
Congress. And again, the colloquy we just listened to this evening
about the farm bill, it's no wonder. The work schedule which the
Republican majority has put forward over the last 18 months would make
Homer Simpson blush.
I mean, the fact of the matter is we've had repeated recesses. We've
had a work product, in terms of actual numbers of bills that have been
discussed and brought forward on the floor, at historic lows. We've had
a shutdown crisis in April of last year where, literally, the country
was on the edge of its seat in terms of whether or not the U.S.
government was going to shut down last April of 2011.
We had, for the first time in American history, the prospect of a
default on the full faith and credit of this country, when the debt
limit issue was run up to, again, the final seconds before Treasury
would have no authority to sell bonds to pay the bills for this
country. First time in American history we confronted that prospect.
Under Ronald Reagan, the debt limit was extended 18 times with little
or no fuss, yet this majority has intentionally sort of pushed these
sorts of pressure points over the last 18 months, 2 years, to score
political points. And that's something which Mitch McConnell, the
Senate minority Leader, made very clear was the number one priority of
the Republicans in Washington: to cripple this President and to deprive
him of reelection in a second term.
And now, as we stand here on September 10, we are now looking at
another cliff that's facing this country, the fiscal cliff which is at
the end of December, the Tax Code reverts back to pre-2001, raising
taxes for middle class families all across the country.
President Obama has put out a plan which would protect the income of
all Americans up to $250,000. And I want to repeat that. Every American
would still retain their tax cuts from 2001 up to $250,000. For those
who are fortunate enough to be above that threshold of adjusted gross
income, then the rates would revert back to the Clinton era for people
to pay a little bit more. And the Congressional Budget Office has
scored that change as helping the deficit by roughly 800 to $900
billion.
You know, a couple of nights ago we had an opportunity, as a Nation,
to listen to William Clinton, to President Clinton talk about his
record in office, when his fiscal policies put the Nation's public
finances in the black for the first time in decades.
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I mean, a lot of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties could not
sort of remember a time when America was paying its bills and paying
down its debt. President Clinton presided over policies which got us to
that point.
It was also an economy which produced 22 million jobs. We had
unemployment rates below 4 percent in many States like my own, in the
State of Connecticut, where unemployment was between two and three
percent in 1998 and 1999. And he did it in way that was fair and
balanced.
And the speech that he gave in Charlotte the other night reminded us
that when you actually invest in the middle class, when you make sure
that middle class families have the tools to raise their family, to
educate their children, to cover their health care needs, to buy a
house and afford a house, to provide the means so that seniors over 65
won't be bankrupted by health care bills, the fact of the matter is
that's the formula for success for growth in this country.
And, again, the 1990s is Exhibit A for the success of those policies,
which the President, when he gave his acceptance speech, reemphasized
that, again, he is willing to extend the tax cuts for income up to
$250,000 for all Americans, rich and poor, that we would revert the
rates back to the Clinton era, which now even Mr. Romney is talking
very positively about the Clinton years and praises President Clinton's
tenure in office.
Well, he ought to adopt the plan that President Clinton is
suggesting.
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That's a plan which will put the public finances of our country back
into better balance and which will provide a more solid footing. Even
more than that, if we were able to come together with that reasonable
compromise--averting the fiscal cliff--it would give this country and
particularly the business community the confidence of knowing that
their tax exposure--that the fiscal status of this country--is not
literally going to be driven up to the cliff, up to the brink, over
periods of short, monthlong time periods, just as it was in 2011 and
2012.
That really, unfortunately, sadly, is the legacy of the 112th
Congress under Speaker Boehner's tenure. That's why telemarketers are
more popular than Members of the U.S. Congress, which is according to
the Bloomberg News report that came out earlier today. We have a
leadership which has shown itself quite willing to defy all of the
hopes of the American people that we would get people working together
and compromise and extend a horizon for people so that they can make
decisions to invest and to hire. Rather, we have seen under the
direction of folks like Mitch McConnell that the number one priority is
not what matters for the American people; the number one priority is to
bring down this President.
That was the number one issue everywhere I went when I was home over
the last 5 weeks: When are we going to see some compromise out of the
Republican leadership to come together for fiscal policies that will
avert the fiscal cliff? When are we going to come together to diffuse
the sequestration chain saw that's sitting out there on January 1,
which is going to cut through the Federal Government both on the
defense side and on the nondefense side?
I think it's important to remember nondefense interests, whether it's
hospitals or medical providers, are looking at a 2 percent across-the-
board cut in Medicare payments if sequestration goes into effect.
Education, whether it's K through 12, whether it's student loans, are
also going to get hit with that chain saw. We're going to see it with
the National Institutes of Health, which is doing incredibly exciting
work in terms of coming up with cures for cancer by using genome
research. That chain saw is going to cut through NIH in terms of the
great research projects that are going on in that institution. We would
also see the chain saw hit defense.
In industry after industry in which you need to have a horizon,
whether it's building F-35 fighter planes, whether it's building
surface ships down in Virginia or nuclear submarines up in the State of
Connecticut, the fact of the matter is the sequestration option, as
Secretary Leon Panetta--the Secretary of Defense--has said, would be
catastrophic for the national defense of this country. There are
proposals on the table which would avert the implementation of
sequestration. I sit on the Armed Services Committee. We had a hearing
with leaders from the aerospace industry. We had leaders from the
administration--the head of the Budget Office, the Undersecretary of
Defense, Ashton Carter, who handles budget policy.
If you look at the budget which President Obama put out in January
and if you look at Paul Ryan's budget resolution in 2011, what you will
see is, in fact, there is overlap between the two that could easily get
us to the point of diffusing the sequestration chain saw that I
mentioned out there. We have to hit a target of $1.2 trillion in terms
of deficit reduction to avert sequestration from going into effect. If
you look at the savings from the drawdown in Afghanistan, which Paul
Ryan and the Republican majority put in their budget resolution in
2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it totals roughly
about $800 billion, and that's post-2014. That was in the Ryan budget.
President Obama, in his budget plan, had exactly the same measure,
which would save roughly $800 billion. If the two sides would come
together and agree that we could pass a measure that locks in those
savings, then you've really gotten to about two-thirds of the
sequestration target set up under the Budget Control Act.
We can do this. We can do this this week if people would actually,
basically, put down their cudgels--again, 8 weeks away from an
election--and say: Let's do something that's for the benefit of the
country; let's eliminate that uncertainty that's hanging out there;
let's tell those firms that are wrestling with whether or not they have
to issue WARN notices, layoff notices, to their workers because of
sequestration sitting out there on January 1.
Let's come together. Let's get this thing done. Let's look at the
President's budget, and let's look at Paul Ryan's budget. Let's find
the areas of common agreement, which do exist, and let's get this thing
fixed so that the American economy is not facing another one of these
runups. Unfortunately, the majority back in April of 2011 was willing
to push this country to a government shutdown, and later, in August,
was willing to default on the full faith and credit of this country.
Let's not do that. Let's allow the American people the opportunity to
have some security, which is that their jobs, that our national
defense, that health care providers, that educators, that people who
are in the critical areas of research and development over at NIH are
not going to have the rug pulled out from under them because of
sequestration, which was part of a package from which Speaker John
Boehner proudly announced he got 98 percent of what he wanted. Again,
when the Budget Control Act passed, the Speaker was interviewed, and he
was boasting about the fact that the Republicans got 98 percent of what
they wanted. Within that package was the sequestration mechanism. Mr.
Ryan, the candidate for Vice President, actually also publicly boasted
about the fact that sequestration was a compromise which the two sides
agreed to.
So everybody has got their fingerprints on it. The fact of the matter
is that it's sitting out there, and it's creating uncertainty in the
U.S. economy. There are measures that are both within the Ryan budget
and the Obama budget which overlap and from which we could easily
implement a compromise to diffuse that sequestration chain saw that's
sitting out there. All it takes is the willingness of this Chamber, led
by the Speaker, who is now trying to distance himself from the deal
that he embraced back in August of last year, to come forward and say,
okay, let's sit down and hammer this out. You could do it on the back
of an envelope within a matter of a day or two in terms of the areas of
agreement that exist between the Obama budget and the Ryan budget.
The failure to do that--the failure to bring up a farm bill, the
failure to bring up a postal reform bill, the failure to bring up a
Violence Against Women Act for conference and for final resolution, the
failure to implement budgets on the health and labor and education
subcommittee, which the majority just basically, I guess, decided
they're just not going to do--is why Bloomberg News came out with
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their report today saying that Congress is now less popular than
telemarketers.
This is one of the most despised Congresses in American history, and
it has been led by Republican leaders who, again, have shown that they
are more interested in trying to weaken this President than in trying
to strengthen our country. This is with regard to issue after issue,
whether or not it's the farm bill, whether or not it's the postal
reform--where we have a system that is literally now technically in
bankruptcy--whether it's the Violence Against Women Act, whether it's
getting budgets done in regular order, whether it's diffusing
sequestration, whether it's averting the fiscal cliff.
We went home for 5 weeks without acting on any of these measures
because of a recess motion that the Speaker put forward. The country is
basically sitting there, waiting to see whether or not we have either a
short-term future or a long-term future, which all of these issues are
so critical to determining. We are going to be watching this agenda
over the next few days. What we saw today from the majority leader's
office indicated no farm bill, no postal reform bill, nothing related
to any measures to try and deal with sequestration. We have seen a do-
nothing agenda this week by the majority following 5 weeks of being
back in the districts.
The American Farm Bureau was doing a cross-country barnstorm about
the fact that we need to get that measure passed so we can create some
certainty and horizon for the men and women who are getting up every
morning and milking cows and planting crops and harvesting crops, those
who desperately, particularly with the drought conditions in the
Midwest, need to have some certainty that there is going to be crop
insurance in place to make sure that they are not going to go bankrupt.
We have a measure which passed in the U.S. Senate--it's a bipartisan
bill--which saves the taxpayer $23 billion, and yet we have a
leadership which won't even bring up a farm bill for consideration. The
bill that came out of committee wasn't perfect, but it is a measure
which we need to act on to send to conference so that the agriculture
sector of this country can have some confidence about what kind of
future they're going to have beyond the next few weeks or until
September 30, which is when the law of this country reverts back to
that of the 1949 farm bill.
So that's the message which I certainly heard on my break and that
Mr. Braley heard on his break. I think we're going to hear it this week
when representatives of commodity crop groups--the American Farm
Bureau, the American Farmers Union--are going to be gathering in the
U.S. Capitol and demanding action so that we can at least allow one
sector the ability and the confidence to know that they have some
future, both short term and long term.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.
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