[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 24 (Thursday, February 14, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H512-H513]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1050
                          TIME TO GET TO WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Garcia) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GARCIA. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon a group of 20 freshman 
Members of Congress will gather to announce that we are putting aside 
our partisan differences to do the right thing for the American people. 
For Democrats, this means that 10 of us are willing to compromise on 
spending so long as we keep our promise to seniors that they can retire 
with dignity and have access to affordable, quality health care. My 
Republican colleagues have said that they are willing to compromise on 
revenues so long as Democrats meet them halfway.
  Like most Americans, to those of us who are new to Washington, 
``compromise'' isn't a dirty word. It's what regular, ordinary people 
do in their daily lives. The American people get it. If you have a 
problem that arises in your office, you and your coworkers may disagree 
on how to address it, but your company does not wait until it gets to 
the last minute to solve it. You simply meet with your colleagues, put 
differences aside, and find solutions. Not everyone will get what they 
want, but we move forward. And this is precisely what the American 
people have sent us to Washington to do. They have sent us here to 
solve problems on their behalf and not argue all the time.
  Mr. Speaker, the challenges before us are serious, and they deserve 
serious proposals. While our economy is growing, we still have many 
families that are looking for work or waiting for our economy to grow 
more quickly. Many parents are working two and three jobs and yet 
cannot find a way to save money for retirement or send their kids to 
school. I see this all the time in my community in places like Kendall, 
Westchester, and Islamorada.
  This status quo is unacceptable to me, just as I know it is 
unacceptable to my Republican colleagues. Yet it seems that when we 
gather in this Chamber, rather than finding commonsense solutions to 
our problems, we engage in ideological debates that are designed for 
political posturing that lead us to nowhere.
  At a minimum, if we can't agree on every issue, we should be working 
hard to solve problems. The American people may not know this, but the 
fact is that of the 31 days that we met here last month, Members of 
Congress only gathered six times. And in those 6 days, the only bill of 
any real significance was the Hurricane Sandy relief--a bill that 
should have been approved last year. Maybe this is the way Washington 
works; but in the rest of America, if you show up to your job less than 
20 percent of the time--that's about 1 day a week--you probably won't 
have a job for too long. And yet some of my colleagues find this 
acceptable. Well, I don't. And I know the

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American people won't find this acceptable either.
  So I respectfully invite each of my colleagues, Republican and 
Democrats alike, and even those of you who have been in Washington for 
a while, to join us for this moment of bipartisanship and work together 
on behalf of our fellow citizens. Let's remember that it is a privilege 
to serve the American people. It's time to get to work.

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