[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 28 (Wednesday, February 27, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H693-H697]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS HOUR: SEQUESTRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Pocan) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance the calls made by our
colleagues today to put a stop to these disastrous spending cuts known
as sequestration.
It's been interesting. For the last 45 minutes I've listened to
people from the other side of the aisle talk very passionately about
their concerns on government spending, on debt, on government waste.
And yet, almost not a single one of those issues is covered by what we
have before us in the next 48 hours, which is sequestration.
Sequestration is a thoughtless approach that makes irresponsible,
indiscriminate cuts down virtually every single budget line. If you
think there is waste with a $4 million TV station in the IRS, as one
speaker said, sequestration won't stop that. If you think we have too
much debt, sequestration won't stop that. If you think we have too much
fraud, abuse, and waste, sequestration won't stop that.
But what sequestration will do is have a real impact on the middle
class families, not just in Wisconsin, where I come from, but across
the country, and that's why so many of the people in the Progressive
Caucus and Democrats have such a strong concern about what this country
is facing, because of this House, this Chamber's inability to act in
the next 48 hours.
You will hear from a number of people from different parts of the
country this afternoon who are going to talk about the very real impact
of sequestration on their States and on their districts, and the very
impact that I think the middle class is feeling that doesn't really
relate to what we heard for the last 45 minutes, but relates to the
very issues that people care about--education, health care and so many
other areas.
It's funny, last week I got a chance to be back home in my district,
and as I talked to the people of south central Wisconsin, it's not at
all what you hear talked about here in Washington, D.C. It's almost as
if it was a different country, not just the District of Columbia, but a
completely different country when we talk about sequestration.
And what people care about is, how do they make sure they've got a
job? How do they make sure they've got enough money to pay for the food
on their table, to support their children, to provide opportunities for
their families?
But instead what we see is quite different with the sequestration
cuts that are going to happen. There's a real impact on the middle
class, and it's pending and it's looming because we can't get the
people in this room to sit down and get our jobs done.
I heard multiple stories over the last week, and just in the last 45
minutes, about how sequestration came about. I can tell you, people in
Beloit and people in Barneveld and people in Baraboo and small
communities across Wisconsin don't care about the finger-pointing of
how it happened. They don't care that in 1985 this idea started, and
it's been a bad idea. It was such a bad idea that it was agreed to last
year because they thought absolutely no one would go for this idea, and
now we have people arguing, don't worry; we'll fix it a month from now.
I can tell you, in Wisconsin, we're a little different. When our
check oil comes on in Wisconsin, we check our oil, and if we have to we
put oil in the engine. Here in Washington, D.C., we just keep running
it until the car stops and the engine breaks down, and then we all
decide that we're going to somehow fix the engine, which is a much more
costly process. But I guess that Wisconsin common sense doesn't happen
in Washington, D.C., and it's clearly not happening in this House as we
deal with sequestration.
I have a couple of colleagues here who are going to share some
stories, and then I'm going to come back and share some more stories
from my area, some of the very cuts you're going to see in Wisconsin
and nationwide. I'm going to share some real stories from people who,
not just from my district but across the country, are talking about the
impact on their lives.
I want to share a little bit about my experience. I spent 6 years on
a budget-writing committee in the Wisconsin Legislature, and I chaired
that committee. And we did things in a very different way and in a very
bipartisan way, something that is a foreign concept to Washington, D.C.
First I would like to recognize one of my colleagues from the west
coast. Representative Mark Takano is a fellow freshman. He represents
the Riverside area of California. A teacher by profession for over 20
years, also a community college board member, so he's had a lot of
experience and is recognized in our caucus as one of our foremost
experts on education. But he knows the real-life impact that this is
going to have on California and on his district.
I would like to yield some of my time, Mr. Speaker, to the gentleman
from California.
Mr. TAKANO. I'd like to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for
yielding some time to me this evening.
Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a lot of talk from my friends on the
other side of the aisle about whose idea the sequester was, instead of
actually working to stop this from happening.
Make no mistake. If the House Republican leadership really wanted to
[[Page H694]]
stop the sequester from taking effect, they could do so. It's the House
Republican leadership that is sitting back and letting the sequester go
through.
My friends on the other side of the aisle seem to forget how we
arrived here. In 2011, it was the Democrats who wanted a clean raise of
the debt ceiling, which had been the process for decades, under
Republican and Democratic Presidents. But the extreme wing of the
Republican Conference demanded cuts, and chose to hold the American
economy hostage.
What we got was the Budget Control Act of 2011, which Speaker Boehner
said was 98 percent of what he wanted. And here we are, a year and a
half later, Mr. Speaker, up to the eleventh hour again, dealing with
another manufactured crisis instead of talking about jobs and how to
improve the economy.
But again, we must deal with the soap opera that is the House of
Representatives. Every time the House of Representatives wants to pass
some meaningful legislation, we're forced to go through this pattern
where our citizens are put through weeks of drama on pins and needles
wondering what will happen. But then what happens is the governing
majority finally comes together to pass legislation with substance,
legislation that is sensible.
But who is this governing majority that passes meaningful
legislation?
It's made up nearly of the entire Democratic Caucus, and a handful of
moderate, sensible Republicans. When we faced the fiscal cliff, which
nearly every credible economist said would be disastrous for our
economy, it took a commonsense governing majority of 172 Democrats and
85 Republicans to come together to save the economy from ruin.
{time} 1730
On the vote to provide aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy, after
weeks and weeks of delay, with leaders of their own party up in arms,
finally the governing majority emerged with 192 Democrats and only 49
Republicans. I understood the need to help the victims of Superstorm
Sandy. I'm from California, where earthquakes and other natural
disasters are a reality, as are tornados in the Midwest and hurricanes
in Florida. Most Americans understand that it is a basic function of
the Federal Government to provide aid to victims of natural disasters;
but still the Republican caucus was divided, and it took reasonable
people to come together to help those in need.
And just last night, we got word again that the governing majority is
needed in order to pass some real legislation as we take up the
Violence Against Women Act. The reality is, to pass anything with
substance, Speaker Boehner needs the Democrats.
So when the House of Representatives takes up the Senate version of
the Violence Against Women Act, what will the governing majority look
like? Go to Twitter and tell me what you think the vote will look like
with the hash tag Boehner Needs Dems.
Mr. Boehner, the governing majority has done its job with the fiscal
cliff, with aid to Sandy victims, and I'm willing to bet that the
governing majority will do its job once again with the sequester and
the Violence Against Women Act.
Speaker Boehner, when you're ready to get serious, we, the governing
majority, are here to help.
Mr. POCAN. I'd like to thank the gentleman from California for those
remarks.
You've heard a little bit from the west coast. You heard a little bit
from the heartland. Now we can hear a little bit from the east coast,
the State of Pennsylvania, and another colleague of mine, another
member of our freshman class that we have of 49, and now soon to be 50
freshman Democrats in this House of the 113th Congress. Representative
Matt Cartwright is a lawyer by trade. He represents consumers and
making sure they get their fair share in this country. Mr. Cartwright
also is a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
where he is the ranking Democrat on a committee to make sure that
economic development is a priority for the people of this country.
It is my honor to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CARTWRIGHT. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin.
I'm here to address the draconian and irresponsible and
indiscriminate effects of this ridiculous sequestration program that's
slated to take effect on March 1. I use the word ``indiscriminate''
advisedly. It is indiscriminate. It is as if the government were a
surgeon and seeking to take out a cancer, a lesion making a patient
sick. Instead of being given a scalpel to take out that lesion, the
surgeon is forced to use a meat cleaver.
That is an appropriate analogy for what this sequestration is doing
because it is an indiscriminate set of cuts across the board to the
discretionary spending in the United States. No responsible business
person would ever engage in such a budgetary process. No one with any
sense would do this in the government. And yet we're left with this.
Instead of repealing it and replacing it promptly, what we see is
that the Speaker is instead engaging in finger-pointing and in the
blame game to avoid moving forward and fixing the problem in the first
place. It's irresponsible, and it has to be dealt with differently.
I say that if Congress cannot come up with a replacement to the
sequester before the end of this week, we should eliminate the
sequester entirely. One million working Americans should not be forced
to pay the price for what is nothing more and nothing less than
stubbornness and hard-headedness. We would prefer to replace the
sequester with a balanced approach to deficit reduction.
The Progressive Caucus already introduced a bill called the Balancing
Act that reflects what the American people already voted for this past
November. The Progressive Caucus Balancing Act replaces the sequester
with a balanced approach to new revenue and necessary Pentagon cuts,
and it creates jobs all over the country. It equalizes the cuts we've
already made with revenue by closing tax loopholes for America's
wealthiest individuals and corporations.
But we shouldn't just sacrifice our economic recovery because
Republicans are unwilling to vote for one single penny in new revenue,
new contributions from their billionaire friends and corporations. We
have to look at what these cuts mean in the sequester. The sequester
involves 70,000 children being kicked off Head Start. No one in this
Chamber disagrees about the importance of Head Start. Early childhood
education is absolutely essential in creating the foundation for
learning in children all over the world. And that's what Head Start is
about. There will be 70,000 American children kicked off Head Start.
That's what happens when you use a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel.
We're talking about more than a million kids who will see their
schools lose education funding. We're talking about emergency
responders who will lose their jobs, meaning slower response times and
weaker disaster preparedness. We're talking about layoffs and furloughs
for Social Security workers that is going to cause delays and hassles
for millions and millions of Social Security recipients--people who
depend month in and month out on their Social Security checks to put
food on their table.
In my district, the 17th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, we
have one county--Schuykill County--where 149,000 people live. Out of
149,000 people who live there, fully 38,000 of them subsist on Social
Security checks. If those checks are delayed, if those people get
hassled getting those checks because of this sequester, that is a
crying shame.
We're talking about cuts to air traffic controllers, for those of us
who have to fly around as part of our jobs. We're talking about cuts to
airport security agents. All of this is going to mean longer waits,
travel disruptions.
The consequences of more massive budget cuts are real. This isn't a
game we're talking about. In fact, economic growth in the United States
is going to slow because of this sequester. Hundreds of thousands of
jobs will be lost and more people will have to rely on government
assistance to meet their basic needs than ever before. This is exactly
the opposite of what we need to be doing in the United States, and it's
the opposite of what the American people asked for in the November
election. It's time that our colleagues across the
[[Page H695]]
aisle--the Republicans--wake up to what is really about to happen to
American families. It's time that we eliminate the sequester.
I want to talk to you a little bit about specific examples of what we
expect to happen in my home State, the Keystone State of Pennsylvania.
If sequestration was to take effect, we're talking about job losses to
the Tobyhanna Army Depot, which is something that for the last 60 years
has provided electronic refurbishing to Army equipment. We're talking
about command and computer and communications control to Army equipment
that is refurbished right there in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, by as many
as 5,400 dedicated, patriotic people supporting our warfighters for the
last 60 years with this kind of electronic equipment.
{time} 1740
We're talking about cuts to Tobyhanna Army Depot of $309 million over
10 years as a result of this reckless and irresponsible sequester.
We're talking about teachers and schools. Pennsylvania is going to
lose approximately $26.4 million in funding for primary and secondary
education, putting around 360 teacher and teachers' aide jobs at risk.
About 29,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 90
fewer schools would receive funding if this nonsensical sequester
program goes through.
Head Start and Early Head Start services in Pennsylvania alone would
be eliminated for approximately 2,300 children, reducing access to
critical, critical early education.
And then children with disabilities on top. Education for children
with disabilities: Pennsylvania will lose about $21.4 million in funds
for about 260 teachers, teachers' aides, and staff who help children
with disabilities in school.
Even worse, protections for clean air and clean water. Pennsylvania
would lose as much as $5.7 million in environmental funding to ensure
clean air and air quality, as well as prevent pollution from pesticides
and hazardous waste.
In addition, Pennsylvania could lose another $1.5 million in grants
for fish and wildlife protection.
We're going to sacrifice our schools, we're going to sacrifice the
environment, all in the name of stubbornness and wrongheadedness--mule
headedness--on the part of the people who should be coming to the
people, the Republicans, who refuse to engage in any sort of
responsible revenue legislation whatsoever.
Finally, military readiness. In Pennsylvania, about 26,000 civilian
Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay
in Pennsylvania alone by around $150.1 million in total.
This isn't a joke. We talk about deadlines here in Congress; there
are hard deadlines and there are soft deadlines. We have seen Congress
only moves when there's a hard deadline, when there's an actual cliff
we're about to go over.
This is irresponsible in itself because I think--it is the case that
many here in this Chamber believe that March 1 is a ``soft deadline''
because all that's happening are furlough notices are going out and
people are not actually losing their jobs for another 30 days or so.
For example, the Tobyhanna Army Depot, furlough notices are slated to
go out in the middle of March for furloughs that actually take place at
the end of April. There are those in this Chamber who think that's a
soft deadline that doesn't really matter, it's just a furlough notice
anyway.
Well, I'm here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that furlough notices go to
real families--real families who have to plan for their budgets, real
families who have to plan on how they're going to feed their children
and clothe them and pay the mortgage and keep the car running and keep
gas in the car. They have to think about how they're going to do all
these things when they're holding a piece of paper that says you're
losing your job in 30 days. It's cold comfort for them, for those
families, to hear that, well, this may not happen when they're holding
it in black and white, a letter that tells them they're going to be out
of work in 30 days.
This is no way to run a government; this is no way to make a budget;
and this is no way to be responsible with the finances of the United
States of America.
Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Cartwright, for continuing your fight for
families in Pennsylvania and across the country.
When I listen to Mr. Cartwright and I listen to Mr. Takano and I
listen to speakers throughout the day from the Democratic side of the
aisle, I can't help but feel that there is an overwhelming--when you
look at sequestration, you're really looking at what's happening right
now in Europe, and it's called austerity. We know that right now, by
doing these massive cuts in Europe like we're now trying to pattern
right here in the United States, we know what the net effect is. Right
now in England, they are facing a triple-dip recession--not just a
double dip, a triple-dip recession. We look at where they are in
unemployment; their unemployment is rising. We look at where their
deficit is; it isn't going away. All they've done is taken away the
very tools that stimulate our economy.
When you take away the jobs that Mr. Cartwright and Mr. Takano talked
about, that means real people don't have money to spend and build the
economy. When you take away the loan guarantees as this sequester will
do, real small businesses don't have capital so they can grow and hire
more workers. When you have the very effects that we are seeing done
right now in Europe happen here, well, what effect do you think we're
going to have? I can guarantee it's not going to be fixing that $4
million TV station at the IRS that we heard about. Instead, it's going
to have a real impact on every single family throughout the country
that's not in the top 1 percent.
So at this point, I want to share a few statistics from the
heartland, and then I've been joined by another colleague from Florida.
We are literally going across the country and showing what these
impacts have. But let me share some statistics from my State.
We know from a George Mason University study that over 2 million
people in this country could lose their jobs because of the sequester.
That's 36,000 jobs in Wisconsin, a State that, unfortunately, thanks to
our Governor, we have not bounced back like other States in our region.
It's those failed economic policies that we've had in Wisconsin by our
Governor that have already held back our economic growth, and now we're
going to jeopardize 36,000 more jobs in my home State.
Wisconsin is going to lose millions of dollars--$19 million for
education just for disadvantaged students and for special ed. That's
going to affect tens of thousands of students in our State.
Head Start funding, while we know the impacts that are going to
happen nationwide that Mr. Cartwright talked about, it's going to have
hundreds of kids who are not going to have that funding in my State of
Wisconsin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison--which is one of the most
important public universities in this country, it is a world-class
institution for research, for stem cell research, for all sorts of
biotech and high-tech innovations, one of the best graduate programs in
almost every program in the entire country, and yet we know they're
going to see about $36 million lost that would go into research and
development and financial aid and other programs that will affect real
people and real jobs in my State.
I have had doctors come and medical schools come to us in the State
of Wisconsin and say they are going to lose the ability, because of the
sequester, to have people in residence programs. I think it was 900 or
1,000 people won't have positions. And one of the best ways we keep
doctors in Wisconsin, in the rural parts of Wisconsin where it's tough
sometimes to keep those doctors, is by having residency programs. That
will be cut because of the sequester.
Nine hundred thousand fewer patients will be served as a result of
$120 million in cuts to community health centers that are vital in
those rural communities in Wisconsin. In my district, in Dane County
alone, we have an agricultural economy that's greater than 15 States in
this country--that's just one county in my district--and yet we're
going to see those programs hurt and cut, as well as programs like
Meals on Wheels. Four million meals may not
[[Page H696]]
happen in Wisconsin because of those cuts.
Finally, one of the areas that I think we hear lip service to from
people on the other side of the aisle--and you see real action from
people on this side of the aisle--is what are we doing for small
businesses, not the big businesses, not those who outsource jobs
overseas, not those who domicile in other countries so they don't have
to pay taxes. I'm talking about the small businesses like mine that I
deal with on a daily basis.
For 25 years I've had a small business. It's the people who pay their
taxes and who hire the workers who are the real economic engines for
our community.
{time} 1750
Well, thanks to the sequester, we could see up to $900 million less
in loan guarantees to help stimulate the economy. So what sequester is
is nothing more than an austerity policy that's going to provide so
many cuts and damages to the economy that we will see, according to
what we've been told by the experts, could cut our economic growth in
half in the next year. And we can't afford to have a double-dip
recession, much less a triple-dip recession, like we're seeing right
now in Europe.
With that, I would like to yield to yet another great freshman
colleague of mine. This is a woman from southern Florida. Like myself,
we've spent time in our legislatures. She is an expert in many areas,
and she was a legislative leader in the State of Florida. I could think
of no one better to tell us about the potential cuts in her State than
Ms. Frankel from south Florida.
Ms. FRANKEL of Florida. Thank you, Congressman, and thank you for
inviting me to join you today. I don't want to go through all the
statistics. I guess I could because sometimes we forget that we're
talking about real people. Let me just keep it very, very simple.
First of all, in the State of Florida, the beautiful State of
Florida--I tell people I live in paradise--we're finally turning the
corner with the economy. Over the last several years, we literally lost
millions of jobs. Our construction industry went bust. Of course, the
whole country was hurting, so tourism got hurt. And now we're starting
to turn things around. The value of our homes is going up, the tourists
are coming back, and people are finding work.
The worst thing that could happen right now--the worst thing that we
could do here in Congress to our economy back home--is to remove so
much money in such a quick time from our economy that it would put our
job market in a tailspin. Outside analysts say that just in the State
of Florida, over the next year, we could lose 80,000 jobs. Now, we're
not talking about 80,000 government jobs. We're talking about the
removal of government spending--that horrible government spending--from
our economy. It will mean 80,000 Floridians, mom and pops are not going
to be able to pay their mortgage or send their kids to college. And
they could be a teacher, or they could be a bus driver, or they could
be a manager in a hotel. It's going to affect all walks of life.
Just like your State--and I heard Mr. Pocan talk about the effects
where he lives--we will lose money from education, our science
programs, and our transportation infrastructure. But what I want to
talk about is a couple people today. I want to talk about real people.
I talked earlier today about Ruth. I don't know if you heard me talk
about Ruth, but if you didn't hear me talk about Ruth, I want you to
know about Ruth, because Ruth is 91 years old. Congratulations, Ruth,
for getting that far along in life.
But let me tell you what happens when you get to be 91. I know. I'm
not 91 yet, but I have a lot of constituents in Florida who have
retired to the area where I live. Do you know what happens when you get
to be 91? So many of the people who you love, so many of the people who
you grew up with, your children, your friends, your neighbors, they
pass on. And by the time you get to be 91 and you've moved away from
your family--in Florida it happens often--you are left alone. So when
Ruth came home from a stay in the hospital, she was alone. She had no
ability, by herself, to shop and to cook, and she could barely get out
of bed. She had nobody to help her, except she had us. She had us, the
safety net of the United States of America.
With the safety net of the United States of America, she had
delivered to her, on a regular basis, meals from a program called Meals
on Wheels, so she could eat every day. It astonishes me that on
Friday--it's Friday, right? On Friday, we hit a phase of our history,
what we call sequestration, which means that literally hundreds of
thousands of our seniors like Ruth across this country face the
prospect of not having a meal each day.
I'm going to tell you one more story, and then I'm going to yield
back. This is a story of a young woman named Tanjee. And this is a good
story, because Tanjee, when she was a young mother, a young single
mother, when she was working really hard but not making a lot of
money--a lot of people in this country work really hard but they don't
make a lot of money--and she has four children. And in order for her to
go to work every day to provide for those children, she needed to leave
them in a safe, nurturing environment, and she did so in a location in
my town called the YWCA. They had a Head Start program. And today, her
children, one has become a teacher, one is in the military, and two are
in high school. What would have happened to her children had the United
States of America not been there for her?
I want everybody to know that it's not just about numbers. There's
lots of numbers. This is about flesh-and-blood people who are going to
be hurt by our inaction.
So, with that, Congressman, I want to yield my time back to you and
thank you for inviting me to participate today. Let's keep fighting to
stop the sequestration, and let's get our fiscal house in order in this
country in a balanced way and not in a way to kick people out of jobs
and take food from seniors and quality child care from children.
Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire how much time remains?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin has 25 minutes
remaining.
Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Florida hit it exactly
on the head. This is about real people. This is about the effects that
sequestration will have on real people, the kind of people who, when
they hear ``sequestration,'' they think it's a medieval torture.
Average people don't come up with a term that only Washington could
devise, which is what we've done with the sequester.
Let me tell a real story from my district. There's a woman in
Marshall, Wisconsin, who sent me an email. I'd like to share that with
the American people.
Here's what she says:
It's being reported that the effect of the sequester on
average Americans will be minimal. In the case of our family,
this is not true. My son is a civilian firefighter at Offutt
Air Force Base in Omaha. Today, he gave me a call to tell me
that all the firefighters would be getting a letter Friday
explaining that their shift crew size will go from 19 to
seven immediately. As a firefighter, he must work 106 hours--
versus 80 for the rest of us--to receive overtime. In
addition, their overtime will be eliminated. That will result
in a 40 percent reduction in pay for my son's family. His
wife is in graduate school, and they had their first child in
December 2012. There is a real face to the reductions. Please
use your energy and Wisconsin progressive common sense to put
a stop to this across-the-board reduction.
That's another real story of someone being affected. It's not about a
$4 million TV station at the IRS. It's about the real people in this
country who will see the impact in the next month and the next month
and the next month.
{time} 1800
And as much as the Republicans tell us that they'll try to fix it a
month from now--again, I don't know why you wouldn't just fix it
instead of letting these devastating cuts come in.
I want to share another story that came in from Oregon, Wisconsin.
This is from a case manager who works with seniors at Meals on Wheels.
Let me read their story. They said:
I work in Beaverton, Oregon, as a case manager for seniors
and people with disabilities. I work with seniors who live on
$700 a month. That's all they have to pay for rent,
utilities, food, and medication. If Congress cuts funding for
the programs that my department administers, the seniors I
work with could end up in the hospital, sick, or just living
on the streets.
[[Page H697]]
Budget cuts also affect our jobs. I'm a single parent with
a child who goes to school. So if there are cuts, I might
need assistance myself.
We see the faces of our seniors, we see their homes, and we
see how they live on a very limited income. Some legislators
say it's too much money and we can't afford it. But if we
don't provide services, these people could literally die if
we take away their life support. That's what our services
represent to the seniors who I work with: life support.
Look, this isn't about pointing fingers and assessing blame on whose
idea this was. Let's figure out how to get it done, how to fix this.
I can tell you, when I served on our finance committee in the State
legislature in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to serve on that for 6
years. I served on that 16-member committee when there were 12
Republicans and 4 Democrats; I served on that committee when there were
eight Republicans and eight Democrats; and I served on that committee
and chaired it when there were 12 Democrats and 4 Republicans. I've
been on pretty much every configuration you can have. The way we did
our budgeting was we would literally spend 3 days a week, 8 hours a day
for 3 or 4 months just agonizing over every detail of the budget
because it was important. Every single program we had, every single
dollar we spent meant something to someone. We had to make sure that we
were spending it in the most wise and efficient way possible.
I've heard a lot about how Federal Government spends too much, how
there's waste, fraud, and abuse, but the sequester doesn't address
that. The sequester addresses these across-the-board, indiscriminate,
irresponsible cuts we would never do when we were actually laying out
the budgets we did back in our State of Wisconsin.
I feel that these real cuts, these real effects that we're going to
see could be stopped, but the only way we can do that is to actually
have that impact right here in this House of Representatives. We need
to get people to come back to the table. Stop the finger-pointing, stop
the blaming, stop saying you'll fix something a month later, maybe.
I'll tell you, last week when I was back in Wisconsin, I have heard
more than 10 or 20 times that people have no confidence in Washington.
How many times have we just kicked the can on the debt ceiling? How
many times have we faced a deadline and the days before maybe started
talking? Here we are 2 days before these meat-ax cuts will take effect,
and this House has done nothing.
We need to take a much wiser approach to this. We need to make sure
that we stop these cuts that are going to have real impacts to small
business owners, to seniors, to parents with children who go to school,
to health care for so many hundreds of thousands of people across this
country, to the people who are going to medical school, to the people
going to our universities, to the researchers, to everything that we've
heard of just in the last 45 minutes. From California, to Pennsylvania,
to Florida, to Wisconsin, you've heard the real impacts of the
sequester. Now it's up to us, the House of Representatives, to act. Yet
we haven't.
We've had our opportunities, and the Progressive Caucus and the
Democrats have put forth real alternatives that will provide both cuts
and revenue that will really deal with the amount of money that we have
to face in the next 2 days to take care of, and yet no one has come to
the table. There's no other plan in this room right now offered to deal
with the sequester that we're going to face in the next 48 hours.
On behalf of the Progressive Caucus and our ability to talk today to
the public, I hope you've heard the real impact of the sequester. I
hope you'll contact your Representatives, no matter where they are
across the country. Email them, call them and tell them, Go get the job
done. You've got 48 hours to do that. I don't want cuts to the schools
that my kids go to. I don't want my grandparent or my parent or my
neighbor to lose their ability to get that Meals on Wheels. I don't
want my neighbor who is a small business owner who is trying to jump-
start the economy to lose access to capital.
You have to make that call because you're our bosses. So, please, in
the next 24 hours, reach out to us and tell your Member of Congress to
get to work. Our job is to end the sequester. If we don't, you'll be
watching, and you expect more of us.
Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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