[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 147 (Friday, November 16, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H6420-H6422]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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AMERICA'S TO-DO LIST
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walberg). 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. Mr. Speaker, as is obvious in this room, the business
for the week has now concluded. This is a week which commenced on
Tuesday; and prior to that, the Congress, the House, had not been in
session for 7 weeks despite the fact that this country has a to-do list
a mile long in terms of the critical issues that affect our health care
system.
Whether it's doctors' fees that are going to hit a cliff on January
1, a 37 percent cut for Medicare providers of all stripes, particularly
in the physician community, we have the fiscal cliff, where tax rates
are going to go up for almost every American wage earner if Congress
fails to act. We have the sequestration, which is a measure which will
be the equivalent of a chain saw going through the government, cutting
.2 percent from every budget, whether it's defense or nondefense
issues.
We have a farm bill which needs to be acted upon. We have, again, the
2008 farm bill which was a 5-year measure that has expired; and it's
critical for rural America. We need to renew the farm bill. And to give
one small example, which the dairy industry has reminded people of,
that the price of a gallon of milk starting in January could
potentially go as high as $7 if we don't restore and reauthorize the
system of price supports that we have in our dairy industry.
The Violence Against Women Act expires. Again, a critical measure so
that law enforcement officials all across the country can continue the
progress that we're making in terms of the issue of domestic violence
and violence against children.
Again, the list goes on and on.
And, incredibly, despite the fact that we have been out of town for 7
weeks--this House convened on Tuesday and is recessing again today for
another week's break. And Thanksgiving is obviously an important
national holiday for our country and is certainly something that is
important to my family, just like every other Member's family--but the
fact of the matter is, if you look at the number of legislative days
between right now and Christmas--where, again, Congress has never been
in session beyond that date--there are literally only 17 potential
days; and the Speaker's Office has only scheduled 12.
This is not the way to run a government. And I would just say--as
someone who, again, was grateful about the support I received from my
congressional district in eastern Connecticut on election day a few
days ago--the message that I heard loud and clear is that it's time for
this body to knock it off, to start working together, and to try to
start getting some of these critical measures dealt with so that the
U.S. economy can have a horizon so that employers can make investment
decisions, so that employers can make hiring decisions, so that issues
of tax policy and budget can give, again, sectors all across the U.S.
economy the confidence to move forward.
We have a very fragile recovery that we're going through right now.
We are roughly averaging about 100,000 to 200,000 jobs a month, which
is not enough to make a real dent in the unemployment rate in this
country. And part of the reason, I believe--and I think, frankly, many
economists and observers of the U.S. economy today believe--that we
have not gotten a faster recovery is because of the uncertainty that
surrounds the failure of Congress to act in terms of the fiscal cliff
and sequestration.
Again, going back to the farm bill, as one example of a huge sector
of America's economy, our agriculture, the Senate passed a farm bill, a
bipartisan farm bill on June 19. This was a measure that was a 5-year
authorization bill that sets food policy, food security policy, food
safety policy. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate--which is,
again, one of the most difficult legislative bodies in the world--
actually came together and passed a farm bill. It will reduce the
Federal deficit by $23 billion. It reforms the whole system of
commodities support so that we're not going to be sending cash payments
to farmers but, instead, modify the system in favor of a risk insurance
so that producers actually have a little more skin in the game, which
is a healthy thing and is a much more market-oriented approach to
having a safety net for agriculture.
In the area of dairy, which is unlike almost every other commodity,
it is harvested every day--actually two or three times a day. In terms
of the herds of cows, the dairy farmers are out there working hard
every day with, again, a very challenging market environment. We have a
solid reform in the farm bill in terms of setting up a risk-insurance
plan. For the first time in American history, we had full support from
the dairy industry and dairy providers. Lots of compromise and
negotiation. And, again, a $23 billion reduction to the deficit in
terms of the last farm bill. That was done on June 19.
Since then, the House leadership has refused to bring a farm bill to
the floor despite the fact that the House Agriculture Committee, which
I sit on, actually passed a bipartisan measure. So it was teed up and
ready for action here on the House floor, and yet we have gone 5 months
since the Senate acted. We had 7 weeks of recess prior to this past
Tuesday. We have American
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farmers who are sitting out there trying to figure out what on Earth is
going to be the future in terms of their production and their
businesses.
And as I said, if you just look at the one example of milk, without
having a farm bill in place on January 1, we are going to see basically
the price of milk spin out of control and all the other sorts of ripple
effects it would have on cheese products, dairy, dry dairy products,
export products. In my opinion, this is not the way to treat some of
the hardest working people in America who, by the way, have actually
been one of the brightest spots in terms of our economy and economic
growth since 2009.
Again, rather than leaving today, what we ought to be doing is taking
the Senate bill, which was a bipartisan bill, putting it on the floor,
doing our job, working at least partially as hard as the dairy farmers
and other farmers across America who don't have the luxury of calling a
recess in terms of their operations, and get this done. Just having
that one measure would, in my opinion, give us some momentum in trying
to start moving forward on the larger issue of the fiscal cliff.
Now, the Senate has also passed a measure regarding the Bush tax
cuts. The Senate passed a bill with, again, all the difficulty of the
Senate rules which would extend the Bush tax cuts for all income earned
up to $250,000, which covers 98 percent of tax filers in America, and
would allow the Clinton-era tax rates to revert for income above that
level, for income above $250,000. That would reduce the Federal deficit
by over $800 billion over the next 10 years. That's from the
Congressional Budget Office. That's not partisan talking points. That's
actual real nonpartisan data from the Congressional Budget Office. That
is sitting, waiting for the House to take it up.
If it was passed, President Obama has indicated that he would sign it
within minutes. And that would basically diffuse sequestration, which
is that chain saw that's sitting out there which, if we don't get $1.2
trillion of deficit reduction in place by January 1, sectors and
programs, critical programs--whether it's FEMA, whether it's the
Department of Defense--will no longer be subject to that cut, that
cutting process which is going to go into effect on January 1.
I am proud to represent eastern Connecticut, home of the Navy base in
Groton, Connecticut, a submarine base that's been in operation for 100
years. We have 8,000 sailors who do incredible work in terms of
operating some of the most sophisticated equipment and platforms that
the world has ever seen in terms of nuclear submarines.
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We have a shipyard, Electric Boat, which has, again, been a proud
shipyard that produced submarines during World War II and continues, to
this day, to produce the Virginia-class submarine, is now going to be
working on the next generation of ballistic submarines, the Ohio
replacement program. Again, these are critical workforces, critical
infrastructure, which today does not know what the reality is they're
going to wake up to on January 2 if we don't deal with sequestration.
But it's not only defense which is subject to the sequestration
provision of the Budget Control Act that was passed in August of last
year, the preceding year. It's also non-defense that will be subject to
cuts and sequestration. And one that is quite relevant to the Northeast
is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which is the agency
that America always looks to at times of natural disasters and
catastrophes.
Again, approximately 2 weeks ago, the State of Connecticut, along
with New York, New Jersey, and other parts of our country, were struck
by one of the largest hurricanes in the history of recorded weather.
The size of Hurricane Sandy was a thousand miles wide. When it hit Long
Island Sound, where my district is, wind speeds gusted, in some
instances, to almost 100 miles per hour at exactly the same time high
tide was hitting communities like Stonington, Connecticut; Eastline,
Connecticut; New London; and Madison, but all the way down the
coastline to New Jersey. The calculation of damages from that storm,
which no one could really insure for because an event like that has
almost never been recorded, is going to be in the tens of billions of
dollars. It may rival Katrina in terms of the need for recovery and
infrastructure replacement as a result of that storm.
FEMA, today, has roughly about $12 billion in its account. If
sequestration were to go through, the White House estimates that FEMA
would lose about $878 million at a time when FEMA emergency centers are
being set up from Rhode Island all the way down to southern New Jersey.
These are centers where people who have lost their homes, in some
instances lost their businesses, have lost equipment, are now flooding
in to try and get relief and help, like any other natural disaster in
the past. These are people who have paid their taxes year in and year
out and made sure that FEMA was there when the folks down in Louisiana
and Mississippi were hit by Katrina.
FEMA is the agency which helps communities pay for police overtime,
fire overtime, sanitation worker overtime. These are the folks that we
always call on at times of emergency. Yet sequestration, which this
Congress has failed to address, is now sitting out there, really
putting at risk the ability of FEMA to do its critical job.
Another program which is now subject to sequestration is the Medicare
program--the Medicare program which serves our population of seniors
over age 65, people on disability. Again, it would lose $4 billion
under sequestration. Again, an across-the-board chain saw that would go
through reimbursements to hospitals, nursing homes, providers of every
stripe.
Education, K-12, higher education, Pell Grants, Stafford student
loans, all subject to a sequestration cut of 20 percent over time,
according to the Congressional Budget Office, if this body does not
act.
Rental assistance for the poor would fall by $2.3 billion; nutrition
programs for women, the WIC program, would lose $543 million; the
Border Patrol's budget would fall by $823 million. Anybody think that's
a good idea? The budget for the border fence would drop by $33 million.
NIH, which is doing critical research for cures to cancer and genome
research, is showing incredibly promising results that really, I think,
give a lot of folks over there hope that we're going to be able to
really eradicate or at least treat cancer as we've never done before,
again, NIH, National Science Foundation, all of these programs would be
subject to sequestration if we don't act by January 1. Now, again,
there is clearly sitting out there opportunities for us to avoid that
from happening.
I mentioned the farm bill, which would put a dent in the deficit
target that the sequestration law requires us to hit; the tax measure,
which has already passed the Senate, which would put a huge dent in
hitting that target; and a recognition that both Mitt Romney, when he
was running for President, and President Obama, during their last
debate, acknowledged the need for us to be funding the war in
Afghanistan at the rate of $100 billion a year, which is roughly what
is the price tag of that measure. If you can actually put those pieces
together, we can avoid having sequestration take effect.
We can make sure that FEMA is able to do its job without worrying
about whether or not the rug is going to be pulled out from them on
January 1. We can make sure that defense workers, whether it's a
shipyard in Groton or a shipyard in San Diego, are going to be able to
continue to do their work after January 1. We're going to make sure
that hospitals and doctors who would be subject to these cuts are not
going to basically wake up on January 2 realizing that they lose money
every time they treat their patients.
This is not rocket science. The pieces that overlap on a bipartisan
basis to solve the sequestration problem are sitting out there. This is
not rocket science to say that the Senate, which passed a bipartisan
farm bill, can be acted upon in this body so that farmers in rural
America can actually have a horizon ahead of them so that they can
continue to do their hard work to make sure that America's food supply
stays secure and safe.
What's missing is the political will to get this done. And as I
mentioned at the outset, we have very little time to
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get this done, if you look at the calendar, in terms of how many
legislative days are possible between now and January 1.
Again, Mr. Speaker, there obviously are a lot of pundits that are
spending a lot of time trying to decipher the results of the election
on November 6. But I think every person in America knows in their heart
and in their soul that really what the people of this country are
looking for is to have a government which functions, to have a
government which does its job, a government which is willing to spend
the time and not keep going into recess when so many critical measures
have to be acted upon to make sure that this country, again, continues
the path of recovery and growth and that our citizens are safe and
secure.
That's what people were looking for on November 6. And I think any
Republican and any Democrat--and as somebody who grew up in a proud
Republican family and ended up as a Democrat, I feel like I have some
ability to talk like this. The fact of the matter is that that's what
this country is looking for. They're looking for people to work--and
particularly to work together--to try and solve these problems. We can
do this.
Unfortunately, we're not coming back here until the Monday after
Thanksgiving. But, hopefully, folks who are listening here this
afternoon are going to take the time to contact their Congressman to
say: It's time to knock it off. It's time to get the work done. It's
time to stop this part-time schedule that makes it impossible for
people to sit down and work together and work out the issues that must
get worked out between now and January 1 and allow this country's
recovery to move forward.
If we just get that cloud of uncertainty moved out of the way, the
fact of the matter is the American people can do the rest of the job
easily in terms of making sure that our future is going to continue to
be as bright as I think the wonderful people that make up this country
give us that opportunity and that blessing.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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