[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 29 (Thursday, February 28, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S960-S961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE SEQUESTER

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, here we are again, on the eve of this 
administration's latest manufactured crisis. Tomorrow, as we all know--
anybody who has been paying attention knows--the sequester will go into 
effect. And if we believe the majority leader, the President, and his 
Cabinet, this will be devastating for our economy and for our country. 
But I wish to suggest that the majority leader, the President, and his 
Cabinet put down the beltway Koolaid, because they are predicting a 
disaster that will not occur.
  Let's put the responsibility for this where it lies. The sequester 
was the President's idea in the first place. As much as he and his 
press secretary and staff try to deny it, the fact is, as he wrote in 
his recent book, Bob Woodward has made the point that they told him it 
was their idea. The White House proposed it to Congress and the 
President signed it into law on August 2, 2011.
  In the year and a half since the Budget Control Act became the law of 
the land, the President has done virtually nothing--nothing--about it. 
He has ignored it. He suggested during the Presidential campaign that 
the sequester would not happen, and it was as if he tried to simply 
wish it away. Certainly we know one thing, and that is neither the 
President nor his Cabinet nor the Defense Department nor any part of 
his administration has done anything to plan for it--no planning 
whatsoever--which, of course, makes the implementation more 
challenging, to be sure.
  At times, the President has pretended the sequester didn't even 
exist, even though he signed it into law, such as when the Department 
of Labor notified government contractors they didn't have to abide by 
another Federal law called the WARN Act, which requires them to notify 
their employees of potential layoffs that could result from 
sequestration. The timing, it seems, was inconvenient. Those notices 
would have gone out roughly around November 1, just 5 days before the 
last election.
  To be sure, there is bipartisan consensus the sequester is ham-
fisted. These across-the-board cuts don't amount to smart budgeting. 
But what would we expect after nearly 4 years of no budgeting? And what 
I mean by that, as this chart reflects, is that it has been 1,401 days 
since the Senate, under Democrat control, has passed a budget. This is 
a shameful record and one that needs to be rectified as soon as 
possible.
  We are now told the President himself has missed his statutory 
deadline for sending his proposed budget for the year over to Congress. 
That deadline was February 4. And now they are saying we may not get it 
until after we have had to act ourselves on a budget. So they are 
predicting it will be roughly 7 weeks late.
  Well, no one could argue with a straight face--contrary to the doom 
and gloom and the apocalyptic predictions--that 2.4-percent cuts from 
our anticipated $3.6 trillion annual spending amounts to devastation or 
the end of Western civilization or whatever sort of apocalyptic terms 
you want to use. So let's look at what 2.4 percent in cuts would mean 
to the average American family.

  If you use 100 gallons of gasoline to run your car every month and 
you had to cut that back by 2.4 percent, that means you would be able 
to use 97.6 gallons of gas.
  If you have a $250-a-month grocery budget, you would need to find $6 
in savings. And on a monthly utility bill of, let's say, $175, you 
would have to trim it down by $4.20.
  These are the kinds of cuts the American people have had to make for 
themselves during the recession of 2008 and due to slow growth and high 
unemployment since then. Yet President Obama is either unwilling or 
unable to propose similar cuts to replace the sequester.
  If he doesn't like it, well, let's have his proposal for how he would 
fix it since he signed it into law. Instead, what we get is a proposal 
that we will vote on this afternoon from our friends across the aisle 
that would just raise more taxes after one of the largest tax increases 
in American history as a result of the fiscal cliff negotiations just 
in late December.
  So the President is content to push through more spending to grow the 
size of government, notwithstanding the fact that the Federal 
Government is now spending more money than it ever has as a percentage 
of our economy. And we have $16.5 trillion in debt. We have important 
programs such as Medicare and Social Security that are unsustainable--
unless Congress and the President act on a bipartisan basis.

[[Page S961]]

  This is not a mystery. This is not something that Republicans know 
that Democrats don't know; we all know it; and the President knows it 
because his own bipartisan fiscal commission told him in December 2010.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the White House-backed 
bill offered by our Senate Democratic friends to replace the sequester 
would actually raise the deficit this year by tens of billions of 
dollars. Now, you may be wondering about that, thinking that the 
sequester was supposed to cut spending. But, actually, the proposal 
made by our friends across the aisle would raise the deficit this year 
by tens of billions of dollars--not exactly what I would call progress. 
It is absolutely ludicrous, especially when we consider that even with 
the sequester spending by the Federal Government will still be higher 
this year than it was last year.
  Let me repeat that in case people weren't listening. Even with the 
spending cuts mandated by the sequestration, $85 billion in cuts, this 
administration will still have more money to spend this year than last 
year. It is hard to see how that would wreak devastation. Yet last year 
we didn't see planes falling out of the sky, we didn't see empty 
supermarket shelves for lack of safe food, nor did we see the national 
parks shutting their front gates. We didn't see any of the doomsday 
scenarios the President and his Cabinet are now warning about after 
1\1/2\ years of doing nothing.
  Of course, the President talks endlessly, it seems, of the need for a 
so-called balanced approach. Well, he got his pound of flesh. He got 
his $600 billion in additional tax revenue from the American people. So 
where is the balance to that? When all he and his party proposes is 
more taxes and more spending, that is not balance.
  Now is the time to cut spending. That is the only way forward, and 
that is the only way to begin--with one small step--to return our 
country to sound fiscal footing.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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