[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 28 (Wednesday, February 27, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H688-H693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE SEQUESTRATION MYTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I'm joined by some of our colleagues 
tonight here to talk about the sequester. We've heard a lot about it in 
the last, I guess, 10 or 12 1-minute speeches about the sequester and 
how bad it is and how it's going to wreck our economy.
  We know that it is going to affect some people's lives, and we hate 
that. We much preferred a different way to do the cuts. We actually 
have passed two bills to address the cuts in the sequester that better 
address the needs of this country and our spending habits and didn't 
affect the many thousands of people that will either have to go to 
part-time work or no work due to these cuts.
  It's been over 300 days since we passed the first bill out of this 
House; yet the Senate did not take it up. And so 2 months later we 
passed another one that the Senate has not taken up.
  The President, over the past 3 weeks or so, has traveled a little 
over 5,000 miles, going down to North Carolina, to Georgia, to West 
Palm Beach, to Ohio, to Virginia, talking about the problems. Yet even 
though he's traveled that many miles, it's only 1.7 miles from the 
White House over to the Senate. So he could have cut down on all those 
trips of the rhetoric and the campaign-type attitude that he's put 
towards governing just by traveling 1.7 miles down to the Senate 
Chamber and sitting down with the majority leader over there and the 
rest of his party and saying, look, we need to offer something back 
because we believe in regular order.
  We think the best business that we can have and we think that our 
Founders and the way our Constitution is set up, that we work under 
regular orders. If the House passes a bill, we send it to the Senate. 
If the Senate doesn't agree with it, then they can either put their own 
bill, send it back over to us and we'll go to conference, or they can 
amend our bill and send it back. And then if we can't agree with that, 
we'll go to conference.
  But that's not the way things have been operating over here.
  It's been a failure, in my opinion, on the majority leader's part in 
the Senate that he just refuses to take them up. We're not going to do 
it. We're not going to debate it. It's either my way or the highway. I 
think the American people deserve better than that.
  I'm going to give Mr. Gohmert a few minutes, if he would like to take 
the time, before he has to make one of his dignified appearances, so 
I'll yield to him.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend from Georgia hosting this hour 
and also yielding. This is a very important topic, and people need to 
understand what's going on.
  Now, as someone who was totally opposed to the deficit ceiling bill 
back in July, 1\1/2\ years ago, I told our conference the Democrats and 
the President are never going to allow the supercommittee to reach an 
agreement because they want to blame cuts to Medicare on Republicans, 
when the fact is that ObamaCare cuts $700 billion from Medicare, and it 
has been and it's starting to be and it's going to get really much 
worse because of those cuts from ObamaCare.
  To ourselves here in the House, over the last 2 years we have cut our 
own budgets--the Senate hasn't, but we've cut our own budgets here in 
the House over a 2-year period by over 11 percent, about 11.5 percent. 
This sequester is going to cut us another 11 percent. We're going to 
have cut nearly 23 percent of our own budgets. How did we do that? Did 
we lay off all our staffs and have a big press conference and talk 
about how terrible it was going to be? No. I know in my office we 
basically have what you'd call a hiring freeze. If we lost somebody, we 
haven't replaced them.
  Tom Coburn first raised this point in a letter to the Deputy Director 
of Management for the White House, with all this gloom and doom about 
all the people that the President's going to have to fire because of 
the sequestration, because of a cut of about 2 percent of the budget, 
they're going to be firing all these people or furloughing all these 
people. At the same time, you can go online, you can order books, and 
you can see all the Federal jobs that this administration is still 
offering.
  So an easy suggestion is how about instead of firing and furloughing 
all these people, just hold up on hiring some folks for a while. Across 
America, people know how to do that in business. Instead of firing 
everybody that's been with you for years, that's counting on that 
salary, if you have to cut the budget, the first thing you do is you 
maybe wait to hire somebody for a bit. That would be more caring--
unless of course this administration is more concerned with showing 
that they hired somebody instead of just maintaining what they have.

                              {time}  1640

  We will have cut our ownselves here in the House, our own budgets 23 
percent, approximately, over a 3-year period. If we can do it and still 
get the job done, then I feel sure the people in the White House, the 
people in the executive departments and all those people at the EPA 
that are trying to shut down our own energy production and put those 
people out of work, heck, maybe if they just shut down EPA for a little 
bit and let the States continue, like Texas has, to get their water 
cleaner and their air cleaner, maybe the jobs would increase. The 
President could take credit for that just by slowing the amount of 
regulation this President has been throwing on the American economy.
  Another thing we hear today is that the President is now saying that 
on Friday, after the sequestrations have started and the military is 
having all these massive layoffs--and actually, the truth be known, 
after the President will have gotten what he had been hoping and trying 
to get for years, even as a U.S. Senator, and that is big cuts to the 
Defense Department--after the Defense Department cuts kick in, then, 
and only then, is he going to sit down and talk to congressional 
leaders.
  Well, that's not hard to figure out. What a great political ploy, 
what a great political plan. A year and a half ago, the President and 
the White House came up with the idea of this massive sequester, and 
the biggest loser would be the Defense Department. Reluctantly, some 
people like me said, let's don't do this, let's have other cuts, let's 
don't let the President's plan, with all his massive cuts to defense 
and basically 2 percent cuts to other entities, let's don't let that 
happen. Let's really cut departments, cut things we really don't need.
  But we ended up going along with the President's idea for sequester. 
Then after he gets the cuts to defense that he's been pushing for years 
and years, going back to his days as a U.S. Senator, he gets to come 
forward and spend millions and millions of dollars running around on 
Air Force One condemning Republicans in the House for cutting defense.

[[Page H689]]

  What a great thing. He cuts defense as he's been wanting to do for 
years, forces the Republicans to go along with it, and a year and a 
half later blames the Republicans for cutting defense and says, I 
wouldn't have done that, but now that defense is cut, now let's talk 
about restoring some of that money to groups, the Acorn-like groups out 
there that are going to suffer because they're not going to have money 
to spend on electing Democrats in the next election if we don't return 
the sequestered money.
  The thing is, it's about $85 billion in cuts from a $3.6-trillion 
budget--not that we've passed a budget. That's just how much money will 
likely be spent, approximately. And it doesn't have to be that way.
  One of the things that The Wall Street Journal pointed out in an 
editorial February 19 was they said that Americans need to understand 
that Mr. Obama is threatening that if he doesn't get what he wants, 
he's ready to inflict maximum pain on everybody else. He won't force 
government agencies to shave spending on travel, conferences, excessive 
pay, and staffing. He won't demand that agencies cut the lowest 
priority spending, as any half-competent middle manager would do.
  Then they go on to talk about things. One of the things we find out 
today is that the administration has released people charged with 
felonies and said, look, if you don't restore the money to my agencies 
that I'm demanding, then I'm going to end up releasing more criminals 
on the American public. That is incredible. But he knows the mainstream 
media will give him cover. I hope and pray the American people will not 
give him cover, that we will demand what we've been telling the 
American public we were going to do, we made cuts. The cuts will be 
made. Now let's look for better ways after this to make cuts to other 
programs that need it.
  With that, I yield back to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to now introduce somebody from New York. I 
believe he was the executive for Monroe County for 4 years. He took a 
county that was going bankrupt, or fixing to go bankrupt, and turned it 
around, $125 million, I believe, in the rainy day, so to speak, fund. 
So he's got knowledge on how to do it. He's also been a very successful 
businessman. I think that all these agency and department heads that we 
have, if you can't manage to cut about 2.4 percent of your budget, you 
need to take a look if you're really capable of managing people and 
managing a department of that size.
  So I would ask the gentleman from New York, one of our freshmen, a 
businessman, a great guy, Mr. Collins, to come up and try to enlighten 
us a little bit on what steps he took of running a government, actually 
turning it around and made it to where the citizens got something from 
the taxes that they were paying.
  Mr. COLLINS of New York. I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia 
for that kind introduction.
  I would put two words forward: when I came to my period of time as 
county executive in Erie County, the largest upstate county in the 
State of New York, and it's ``common sense.'' Common sense is something 
that I think frustrates the American public; it's something that we 
don't see in U.S. Government.
  I'd like to point to the sequester as a prime example of what's wrong 
with Washington. We have a broken government, and we all know it. As 
someone who ran for Congress to focus on improving our economy, 
Washington can be a very frustrating place.
  We are now only 2 days away from sequestration taking effect. In 
typical Washington fashion, we're now staring a deadline in the face 
with no answers for hardworking taxpayers.
  The timing of this whole process should not be taking anyone by 
surprise, certainly not the President. President Obama is the one who 
proposed this sequester, and that is a fact. The President insisted 
that these arbitrary across-the-board spending cuts become law as part 
of the debt negotiations in 2011. Now, 2 days away from these cuts 
taking place, I'm very disappointed the President is not working with 
us to find a solution.
  Instead, he is deliberately scaring the American people and 
attempting to convince them that the only way to avoid the pain is to 
raise taxes again. The President is threatening an apocalypse if he 
doesn't get his second tax hike in just 8 weeks. The hardworking 
families of New York's 27th District can't afford it.
  And I believe the American public are seeing this sideshow for what 
it is: a blatant attempt to raise taxes again on American families and 
small businesses instead of addressing our spending addiction. Because 
if the President and the Senate didn't want to raise taxes again, they 
would have a plan. And they don't.
  The House has twice passed a bill to replace the across-the-board 
sequester with responsible spending reductions and reforms. The House 
first passed this legislation 10 months ago to replace the President's 
sequester with smarter, more responsible, and commonsense spending 
cuts. The Senate and the President never addressed those bills; and 
they don't have a plan of their own, except raise taxes.
  The good people of western New York and the Finger Lakes region know 
there are smarter, more bipartisan ways to cut government spending. 
They know that this country must reduce its spending and pay off its 
debt. They know that failing to do so will only mean a continued 
sluggish economy--and even worse, leaving our children and 
grandchildren with nothing but a bag of IOUs. And they know that before 
Washington politicians have the audacity to talk about raising taxes 
again and cutting our military, there are millions of dollars in waste 
in the Federal Government around every corner. And they are waiting--
not so patiently anymore--for us to cut that waste before we tell them 
to hand over even more of their paycheck to the bureaucrats in the 
Federal Government.
  Here is a question: Why is the EPA doling out grants to foreign 
countries, including China, at the expense of $100 million over the 
last decade? Why does the IRS need to run a TV studio that costs $4 
million a year? And why are we paying senior citizens to play video 
games so we can study the impact on their brains?

                              {time}  1650

  Now, I understand these three examples don't equal $85 billion of 
sequester cuts, but these are just three examples of the waste. This is 
crazy.
  Washington must do better because the American people deserve better. 
They deserve a Federal Government focused on balancing its budget, 
reducing it's spending, paying off its debt, honoring its commitments 
to seniors, and making sure our younger generations can actually live 
the American Dream.
  Mr. President, let's stop the scare tactics and let's get to work.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the gentleman for participating.
  Next I want to introduce another one of our bright young freshmen, 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao) of the 21st District, a 
dairy farmer, the son of Portuguese immigrants that has come here. He 
is a veteran legislator that has been with the California Assembly. 
We're excited about having him. He also represents a district that has 
been really hurt by some of the regulations and the environmental 
requirements that this administration has pushed.
  Where he lives and where he farms, his neighbors have lost a great 
number of jobs due to the fact that we can't provide them any water 
that we promised them probably 40 or 50 years ago that had been coming 
to them and they really had the basket of the fruit and vegetables that 
we eat every day.
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. VALADAO. Mr. Speaker, I agree, Congress needs to get serious 
about our Nation's irresponsible spending; however, broad-based, 
automatic spending cuts and tax increases are not the way to get our 
fiscal House in order.
  This week, the administration warned of the devastating effects that 
sequestration will have on many essential services provided by the 
Federal Government. To be clear, while the Budget Control Act of 2011 
defined the amount of sequestration cuts, implementation of these cuts 
is at the discretion of the administration. The administration has now 
threatened to cut crucial services, including laying off air traffic 
controllers and the inspectors that make our food safe. At the same 
time, our government is spending

[[Page H690]]

$1.7 billion operating unused Federal properties. There are numerous 
bipartisan alternatives to increase the Federal Government's efficiency 
and eliminate wasteful spending that do not include raising taxes or 
cutting the essential services my constituents depend on.
  Ultimately, the real solution lies in reviving our struggling economy 
and giving our small businesses the tools to create jobs. In 
California's San Joaquin Valley, burdensome environmental regulations 
have resulted in the fallowing of 200,000 acres of land and the loss of 
countless jobs. This is a prime example of government ignoring the 
solution while creating a problem. At no cost to the taxpayers, we 
could provide certainty to our communities and to the farmers in my 
district that we can protect jobs and actually grow our economy.
  With just 2 days until sequestration takes place, it's time for all 
of us to get serious about our Nation's spending problem and come 
together to do what's best for the American people.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the gentleman for being here.
  Next I want to allow one of my fellow Georgians some time to speak, 
who is another veteran legislator that came out of Georgia, who I've 
served with in the Georgia House, somebody from south Georgia who 
understands what it's about when you have to work hard and farm. He's a 
private business owner, an insurance agent, and a good friend.
  I yield to the gentleman from Tifton, Georgia (Mr. Scott).
  Mr. AUSTIN SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Westmoreland. I certainly 
enjoyed serving with you in the Georgia House where we balanced the 
budget on an annual basis and made cuts certainly much larger than this 
on a percentage basis. Quite honestly, we did it on an annual or a 
semiannual basis when we were there.
  I want to point out one thing that you talked about that's not being 
talked about much here, and that is that the total cut that we're 
talking about is a little less than 2.5 percent of Federal spending. 
The problem with the sequester is not that it's an unreasonable amount 
that's being cut; it's where it's being cut from.
  So here we are less than 48 hours from the President's sequester, our 
Commander in Chief's sequester, that's going to go into effect and set 
into place $1.2 trillion over the course, ladies and gentlemen, of 10 
years. That's one of the things that needs to be pointed out. It's not 
$1.2 trillion over the course of this year; it's over 10 years. So 
you're talking about $100 billion a year out of a little better than a 
$3 trillion annual budget.
  Of this cut that our Commander in Chief has insisted on, over half of 
that is going to come from national defense and our men and women in 
uniform and our civilian workforce and taking its toll on them. Our 
Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, I thought did a great job when he 
actually explained it as hollowing out our military. He told the truth 
about that and just what the Commander in Chief's budget reductions 
were going to do to our military. Obviously, we have a new Secretary of 
Defense coming in now, and I can't help but wonder if Secretary Panetta 
speaking out about what those cuts were going to do to the military 
isn't one of the things that maybe led to his replacement.

  On October 22--just to give you a couple of specifics--in his 
campaign for election as our Nation's Commander in Chief, the President 
promised that his sequestration ``would not happen.'' The President, 
the Commander in Chief, promised that it would not happen. He went to 
great lengths to assure Americans that are working in our military and 
on our military bases, our civilian workforce--I represent Robins Air 
Force Base--he told them this will not happen. He told our defense 
contractors to not comply with the law and actually issue the notices 
that were required under the law that furloughs and layoffs may be 
coming.
  I personally think it was politically motivated, but that's just a 
personal stance of mine, Mr. Speaker.
  On February 6, I asked the President for a solution. I sent a letter. 
I've got the letter right here. I'm sure that somebody at the White 
House got it. We have never gotten any response from any letter that we 
have sent to the White House as a Member of Congress. We simply asked 
him to give us a written proposal on what he would do given his choice 
of having it exactly his way and replacing the sequester. Again, no 
response, no action.
  On February 15, he came to our State, Georgia, and didn't go to any 
of our military installations. We have seven major military 
installations and over a dozen major military communities in the State 
of Georgia. He went to a county and he talked about expanding the role 
of the Federal Government in public education as we were approaching 
the sequester. The men and women at Robins Air Force Base and the other 
bases were left wondering what was going to happen to their paycheck. 
He did not even address the issue while he was in Georgia with our 
seven major military installations and our 12 major military 
communities.
  Mr. Speaker, I didn't vote for the sequester, but what I'll tell you 
is I'm reminded of what Teddy Roosevelt said when I look at the 
national debt and the things we're facing right now:

       The best thing to do is the right thing, the next best 
     thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing is nothing.

  We have to cut Federal spending or we're going to rob the next 
generation of Americans of the American Dream.
  So I would say that here we are as a House having passed two separate 
bills to undo the President's sequester and 48 hours prior to the 
sequester going into action, and all we've heard from the President is 
just words. He hasn't had the guts to put a proposal in writing before 
this House for the American people to see. Here we are, Mr. Speaker, at 
the 11th hour with no action from the President, no response to my 
letter or any other Member's letter, to my knowledge, no plan to 
Congress, no plan to America. He's just a President, a Commander in 
Chief that's willing to let this happen to our military. Half the cuts 
are coming from our military. What kind of Commander in Chief do we 
have?
  Congressman, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today and thank 
you so much for doing this.

                                     House of Representatives,

                                 Washington, DC, February 6, 2013.
       Dear President Obama: As the representative of the Eighth 
     Congressional District of Georgia, home to Robins and Moody 
     Air Force Bases and a member of the House Armed Services 
     Committee, I am very concerned about the impact that 
     sequestration will have on our national security. As you are 
     aware, on March 1, 2013, $500 billion in defense cuts will go 
     into effect unless a law is enacted to prevent it. According 
     to many of our nation's top military leaders, the 
     indiscriminate cuts caused by sequestration would hollow out 
     our forces and severely degrade our military capabilities.
       On October 22, 2012, you promised that ``sequestration will 
     not happen.'' You went to great lengths to reassure Americans 
     that you would work to prevent it, and you even urged defense 
     contractors not to issue layoff notifications required under 
     law. Given your role as our nation's Commander in Chief, I 
     believe that you share my concern over a hollowed military 
     force. However, without your leadership I am fearful that a 
     solution will not be reached.
       We in the House of Representatives passed several bills 
     during the 112th Congress, including H.R. 3662 and H.R. 5652, 
     that would repeal the sequester. Based on your statements, 
     you do not support these bills, yet have offered no 
     alternative. Furthermore, representatives from your 
     Administration were highly ambiguous in explaining your plan 
     for preventing sequestration cuts. In a hearing on August 1, 
     2012 Acting OMB Director Zients testified that your plan to 
     address sequestration was your 2013 budget proposal. Yet this 
     is not a real proposal Congress could act upon, and your 
     budget did not receive a single vote in either the House or 
     the Senate.
       We are running low on time to address sequestration and 
     your administration's lack of meaningful action is concerning 
     to many of my constituents. I urge you to take a more active 
     role in resolving these senseless cuts to our national 
     defense. I look forward to your response and to reviewing a 
     detailed and concrete proposal that Congress can act on so 
     that we can cooperate in a bipartisan manner to resolve 
     sequestration.
           Sincerely,
                                                     Austin Scott,
                                               Member of Congress.

  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman.
  Now I want to introduce another one of our freshmen, somebody that 
comes to us from Florida's Third Congressional District, a 
veterinarian. He is actually a small business guy. I think he's been in 
that business for about 30 years. He also understands the effect that 
this sequester will have on our

[[Page H691]]

military because his oldest daughter, Katie, is an active Member of the 
United States Coast Guard. So I hope that the gentleman will express 
some of those things that he feels about these cuts that are coming to 
our military.
  With that, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

                              {time}  1700

  Mr. YOHO. I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents in Florida's 
Third District to voice the concerns they have shared with me over the 
President's sequester that will go into effect on Friday.
  Make no mistake: cuts need to be made. However, I know, and my 
constituents know, the sequester is not the answer.
  We in the House have shown, and will continue to show, where 
responsible spending cuts can be made. In fact, the House has tried 
multiple times to address this issue and has passed legislation as 
recently as 6 weeks ago. However, the majority leader, Mr. Reid, would 
not address these issues.
  With a Federal Government of this size and magnitude, Washington 
bureaucracy can afford to bear the brunt of these cuts. Not our 
military, not communities like Lake City, or Mayo, or Newberry, or 
Middleburg, Florida.
  I'm working with my friend from Georgia, Congressman Doug Collins, on 
the new Freshman Regulatory Reform Working Group, to help show exactly 
where some of these cuts are and to help businesses do what they do 
best. They grow the economy and they create jobs, bringing in more 
revenues to our government.
  We need to, and we will, show the President and the American people 
that we can cut wasteful spending without hurting kids, our seniors, 
and that we can make responsible cuts that do not put our national 
security at risk, and not add to the heavy tax burden of hardworking 
Americans that they're already carrying.
  It is a shame that the President and the Senate have avoided working 
with the House in a real budgeting process. I look forward to working 
with all my colleagues on restoring faith to the American people and 
bringing order back to this process.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for being here and giving us 
those great comments.
  Now I want to introduce another friend, our policy chairman in our 
Republican Conference, somebody that comes from the great State of 
Oklahoma, somebody that has great experience in managing people. I 
think he ran a youth camp, the largest youth camp in the United States, 
if not the world. I'm afraid to even tell you how many people. I'll let 
him do that. But I would like to recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, 
our policy chair, Mr. Lankford.
  Mr. LANKFORD. I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, it's an honor to be able to stand in front of this House 
today.
  Let me talk about families that all across America right now are 
struggling with their own finances. They're sitting at a dinner table 
this evening, because they have run out of paycheck before they have 
run out of month, and they're struggling through just the basics of how 
they're going to do life, because they're in debt and they're 
struggling through day to day.
  They will make decisions to be able to put their house in order and 
to be able to resolve where they're headed as a family, because they 
don't want to be a family that's going to live heavily in debt. Because 
once you're in debt as a family, everything is about money. Every day 
there's a new battle about money; every day there's a new battle about 
spending and who's going to spend and what bill are we going to pay and 
how are we going to handle day-to-day life.
  The hard part is that's where we are as a Nation right now. The House 
and the Senate and the President, we continue to argue through things 
about money. And every week it seems like we're fighting a new fight 
about money. Because, guess what, we're $16.5 trillion in debt.
  For 5 years in a row, we've overspent the budget by $1 trillion a 
year, and there's no end in sight. We've come to a day that we have to 
resolve how do we get out of this hole, how do we fix this.
  Let me give a quick history of how we actually got here. In 2011, the 
House and the Senate and the White House all agreed if we're going to 
have a large debt plan to get us out--at that point a debt ceiling 
request of $2.4 trillion--we had to have with that extension of the 
debt ceiling also a plan of how to reduce spending by that same amount 
or more so that we didn't just infinitely continue to increase debt.
  So the plan was made to cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years. And then 
there would be a second tranche of $1.2 trillion again to reduce 
spending.
  We couldn't come to an agreement on that. So Jack Lew, who was the 
President's chief of staff, came to Harry Reid and said, here's our 
suggestion, do a sequestration. Harry Reid rejected it initially. Then 
Jack Lew came back to him and said, what if we do half of it in defense 
spending? So an automatic across-the-board cut, if we can't find a way 
to reduce spending in other ways, we'll just do an across-the-board cut 
with half of it in defense and the other half of it from other parts of 
the budget.
  Harry Reid agreed with Jack Lew, the President's chief of staff, and 
the President's plan then went to the Senate and came to the House 
where begrudgingly we all agreed, because none of us wanted to see 
this. I don't believe that the White House wanted to see sequestration 
as well.
  But this plan that was put in place that the House, the Senate, and 
the White House all agreed to was to find some way to reduce spending 
by $1.2 trillion in long-term spending.
  The first option was the select committee, the supercommittee, as it 
was called. It obviously failed in its task.
  Shortly after that, the House of Representatives said that the select 
committee has failed in its task, we cannot have sequestration. And so 
in May of last year, the House of Representatives passed a replacement 
plan for sequestration so that we would not get to this point. As 
Americans constantly talk about Congress waiting 'til the last minute, 
almost 300 days ago the House of Representatives passed a plan to avoid 
sequestration and to do cuts and waited for the Senate to respond so 
that we did not have a moment like this. The Senate never answered us 
back.

  So in December of last year, the House again passed a plan to say 
here's how we can replace sequestration. And, again, the Senate has 
never responded to that.
  We're at a point now, hours away from sequestration beginning, at a 
point none of us wanted to be here, facing the reality that if the 
Senate never responds to us, we're at a point that we will step into 
across-the-board cuts. When that occurs, half of those cuts being in 
defense and a very severe cut after there was already $100 billion cut 
from defense 4 years ago, then $500 billion cut from defense 2 years 
ago, now another $500 billion cut in defense. Defense is carrying a 
very disproportionate number of cuts in this administration.
  We've got to find a way to be able to stabilize all of our programs 
and to do smarter reductions of spending without having this huge hit. 
We've got to learn how to be able to plan ahead, both in the House and 
the Senate.
  Why must this be done in the first place? That's the challenge. We 
have individuals that look at programs that are some of their favorite 
programs and say they're going to face an 8 percent reduction in that 
program this year. And there's going to be a spending cap so they don't 
have infinite growth over the next 10. And they look at it and say, why 
does it have to be that way?
  Well, I can tell you why. Because we are facing a debt crisis that is 
not just something for the next generation. It's now.
  Two weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office released its report on 
the status of America and where we're headed on current law and what 
happens now. In that report, it detailed that right now we pay $224 
billion a year just in interest. CBO 2 weeks ago released a report and 
said on the current path we will pay in interest $857 billion a year 
just 10 years from now.
  So where we have said in the past, for our children they're going to 
have a

[[Page H692]]

crushing debt, it is now this generation, because debt continues to 
accelerate; $857 billion, ladies and gentlemen, is larger than what we 
paid for the entire war in Afghanistan. We will pay that each year just 
in interest payments just 10 years from now if we don't get a handle on 
this. That's larger than all defense for a single year, that's larger 
than all Medicare, that's larger than all Social Security. $857 billion 
in interest alone is by definition unsustainable for us as a Nation. We 
cannot afford to do that. We have to deal with our spending.
  So how do we get on top of that? Well, the President's proposal is, 
let's just raise taxes on a few people. Well, guess what, the President 
got his tax increase in January.
  As of all the reports that are coming back in now, 2013 will bring in 
the largest amount of revenue in the history of the country to the 
Treasury. We will have no year in our history we will bring in more 
revenue than 2013, and yet the President's proposal is we need to raise 
taxes again to cover that.
  Well, one of the tax increases that he recommends is to just raise 
taxes on the energy companies. Just find energy companies and raise 
taxes on that. His proposal raised another $4 billion a year from 
energy companies.
  Well, there are a couple of problems with that. One is, that's a 
great way to raise gas prices again, as this administration has done so 
many times in some of the regulatory schemes that have happened to 
watch gas prices continue to trickle up. It is one more shot to do 
that. And the second part of that is, it's $4 billion. We have over $1 
trillion in deficit spending. That does not solve the problem.

                              {time}  1710

  We are overspending a trillion dollars a year, and we are spending 
more than a trillion dollars more than what we did just 5 years ago. It 
is obvious with the highest amount of revenue in the history of our 
country coming in, we're spending more than a trillion dollars more 
than we did just 5 years ago, this is a spending-driven crisis.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. We borrow about $4 billion a day. We spend roughly 
$10 billion and borrow about $4 billion. So this energy tax would just 
keep us from borrowing for 1 day.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Right. And it would drive up the cost of gasoline yet 
again for all Americans. It doesn't solve the problem; it continues to 
exacerbate the problem.
  Our issue is we're facing a difficult moment. But this is not a 
moment that is manufactured by some sequestration event. This is a 
moment that has been created by overspending year after year after 
year. And now the acceleration of debt and deficit and interest 
payments each year is climbing so quickly that if we don't get on top 
of it soon, we will not be able to get on top of it in the days ahead.
  This is not just a manufactured, short-term crisis. This is a serious 
economic crisis for the United States. And if it is a serious crisis 
for us, it is a serious crisis worldwide. We have the responsibility as 
the largest economy on the planet to be responsible with our finances 
and to get our economy back on track so that the entire world's economy 
can begin to get back on track.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for bringing up that point 
because I think a lot of people may not realize that we're talking 
about $85 billion here. As the gentleman stated, you know, we spend $10 
billion a day. So, I mean, this is 8\1/2\ days that we're saving.
  My son-in-law was a DA, assistant DA, and I remember a couple of 
years ago, he was furloughed for 14 days, which is almost twice as much 
as we're talking about here. He didn't have to put his children in an 
orphanage or go hungry or anything else. They managed their bills. 
That's all we're saying. While we've all heard the sky is falling, I 
think it is something that we can deal with, especially if we have 
competent heads of these agencies.
  So, you know, just looking at some of the other money that we're 
spending, $268 million in executive branch conferences, whether it's 
for the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human 
Services, $268 million just for the conferences, I think we can cut 
those conferences out for a year. Or maybe cut them down, maybe not be 
quite as expensive or elaborate as they are.
  You know, when I came to Congress, I came from a building, a 
construction background. I considered myself somebody capable of 
looking at a set of plans and giving an estimate of what it was going 
to cost and having a vision of what it was going to look like. I 
remember one time I had a customer come in who wanted a roof designed a 
certain way, and I tried to tell them it wasn't going to work. They had 
seen it somewhere else and had gotten somebody to draw it. The one 
thing I did learn in the building business is that somebody can draw 
something, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can build what they 
draw. And so I tried to explain to them, I said, This isn't going to 
work; it's going to cause problems; it's going to look bad. But they 
still wanted to do it. Their house, I did it. The next thing I know, 
they come up complaining about it. And I said, Look, this was your 
idea; I did exactly what you said. And they didn't like it, but it was 
something that they had to live with or pay to get it changed.
  The same thing has happened here with this administration. You know, 
this was their idea. This was something that they wanted to do. I think 
a lot of people said, No, this is a bad idea; we don't want to do this. 
But yet they were so desperate to come up with something to cut the 
spending of this country that they agreed to it. And now all of a 
sudden, the originator of the idea doesn't like it. And he says, Oh, 
no.
  But rather than sitting down and talking to the people that could 
make a difference and make a change, he decided to go out and travel 
the country to talk to people who couldn't. And it's turned out it's 
going to be a bad outcome, but it is the only outcome that could come 
from the plan that was drawn.
  Now, let me say this again about the spending. When you think about 
the fact that we spend $10 billion a day--think about that, $10 billion 
a day. And we borrow about half of it. About 42 percent of it we borrow 
from somebody else. And keep this in mind: the Federal Reserve buys, in 
combination with different things, they buy about $85 billion worth of 
mortgage-backed securities every month--$85 billion every month. They 
print the money to do that. So we've got bigger fish to fry.
  As several people have said today, we've got to get serious about 
this. I'm accountable to 700,000 people--just like every Member of this 
body is--at home, but I'm also accountable to my children and my 
grandchildren and their children. And I want one day, when they sit in 
my lap or come up to me and say, Papa, couldn't you do something about 
this? I want to be able to tell them, I tried, baby. I tried to do it. 
We all tried to do it, but nobody wanted to cut. Nobody wanted to save. 
We just kept putting it on your charge card.
  And so while this $85 billion is going to be tough, it's going to be 
hard, it's going to hurt some families, it's going to cause some people 
to go to part-time employment rather than regular employment, but you 
know what, it's $85 billion that's not going to go onto our children's 
credit cards. I think that's what we've got to remember. We keep 
kicking the can down the road. People my age and in my generation, we 
may not ever have to pay the tab for this, but my children, and for 
sure my grandchildren and my great grandchildren, are going to end up 
paying this tab. So we're not really doing that much other than 
shifting it from our responsibility and our burdens to the next 
generation and the next generation's burdens.

  I see another one of our bright freshmen. Mr. Speaker, anybody out 
there who has been watching, they understand that we have a bright 
freshman class. This gentleman is from Illinois, Mr. Rodney Davis. And 
so, Mr. Davis, I'm glad to yield you time.
  Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. I thank the gentleman from Georgia.
  I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to remind us all what President Kennedy 
told us. He said:

       Let us not seek the Republican or Democratic answer, but 
     the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the 
     past, but let us accept our own responsibility for the 
     future.

  That's where we stand today with this looming sequestration. It's 
time to get beyond the party politics. It's time to stop the blaming 
and the finger-

[[Page H693]]

pointing. The truth is, it took both parties, the House, the Senate, 
and the President, to approve sequestration. And it's going to take 
both parties, Republicans and Democrats, a House, a Senate, and the 
President, to resolve it. The decisions we will have to make won't be 
easy, and no one--no one--will get everything they want, but that's why 
we were elected. That's why our constituents entrusted us to serve in 
this body.
  So let us take this opportunity to do the job that we were sent to 
Washington, D.C., to be in this House, the privilege of serving in this 
House, let's do our jobs, do what our constituents sent us to do. Let's 
put aside the partisan politics. Let's work together, compromise with 
principle, and govern, govern like statesmen. It is expected and, I 
will say, Mr. Speaker, it is demanded of us.
  Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for those words.
  I'll close by saying this. This job is not easy. It's not exactly 
what everybody might think it is, but it's something that we don't need 
to squander.

                              {time}  1720

  It's an opportunity that everybody in this House has been given that 
probably less than 12,000 people have ever had since this country has 
been founded. We don't need to squander this opportunity.
  And we need to honor those that have come before us, that have fought 
and died, the men and women right now that are in Afghanistan and other 
parts of the world that are putting their lives on the line and in 
danger every day, not for us to be running up the debt on them.
  We've got less than 1 percent of the people in this country that 
protect the rest of us. And so, you know, why are we trying to do them 
harm?
  We're trying to fix that, and I want them to know that, that we are 
trying to fix that, and we're going to try to fix it in the CR.
  And for the young voters out there, I want y'all to know that this is 
not something that we're purposely doing to hurt you or your family. 
This is something that we're doing for your children, or trying to do 
for your children.
  All we're asking is that you might encourage others to join us in 
this fight, to try to save this country from going down the road of 
debt and bankruptcy that we're headed on, and instead turn it around to 
the bright future that we all want to have for this country and for a 
better Republic, and something that will bring us back to the 
forefront, to be held in the same esteem that we've always been held in 
by the other countries in this world, not somebody that's continuing to 
dig a hole of debt for our future.
  I yield back the balance of my time.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Salmon). The Chair would ask Members to 
address their remarks to the Chair.

                          ____________________