[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 12, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1678-S1680]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE SEQUESTER

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise in support of the work Chairwoman 
Mikulski and Ranking Member Shelby and the Appropriations Committee 
have done and the place they will bring us to on the floor of the 
Senate this week as we take an important step forward to fix the fiscal 
year 2013 budget. I will be meeting tomorrow--as many legislators do 
during the course of the year--with my Governor. All of the Virginia 
delegation will be sitting down with Governor McDonnell, who will be 
visiting, and he and the State will view this as very good news as we 
can talk about this work product.
  I made my first speech on the floor about 2 weeks ago, and it was a 
speech that was kind of a plea. It was a plea to avoid the economic 
self-inflicted wound of sequester. As we all know, we were not able to 
do that at the time. There were two bills, and neither of them was able 
to get sufficient votes to move forward. The negative consequences from 
that sequester have been felt in the Commonwealth, as I traveled 
around, whether it is warn notices to ship repairers in the Hampton 
Roads area, planned furloughs of DOD civilian employees, or a delay in 
a carrier deployment that could potentially leave us more vulnerable in 
the Middle East.
  The good news is that we can fix it and improve it. The 
Appropriations Committee's work discussed today is a way to begin to do 
that. We have a chance to get it right and to reduce the negative 
effects of sequester by dealing effectively with the expiring CR for 
fiscal year 2013 and then producing a progrowth 2014 budget. This is 
the work before this body in the next few weeks, and we need to do our 
very best work.
  On the continuing resolution, it has been made clear in the comments 
before, we do not have a fiscal year 2013 budget or appropriations 
bills at the current time, so since October, we have been operating out 
of 2012 appropriations bills, pushed forward for a few months at a 
time. This leads us to a situation where we are not forward-focused, 
but we are operating out of an old playbook. We need to align our 
spending around this year's priorities and not be locked into funding 
the priorities of the past.
  The Department of Defense--just to focus on this for a minute because 
defense is critical to the Commonwealth, as it is to all States--is 
very constrained by the continuing resolution that is currently in 
place. There is a $11 billion operations and maintenance shortfall that 
is difficult for DOD to manage in a way that will keep us safe. There 
is a lack of flexibility to adjust to new needs. There are no new 
starts on important projects, including on the shipbuilding and naval 
side, which is so important to the Commonwealth. That has already led 
to a delay in the construction of one of the new Ford class aircraft 
carriers, the USS John F. Kennedy, with a consequent potential loss in 
jobs. Other agencies throughout the Federal Government have been 
similarly affected.
  The good news is that there is a solution. Chairwoman Mikulski and 
Senator Shelby, the ranking member, have worked together to lay that 
out today. This week we will work together on a true appropriations 
bill for the remainder of fiscal year 2013 for critical government 
functions: Department of Defense, military construction, the VA, but 
also homeland security, agriculture, commerce-justice- science. There 
are other governmental functions that will continue to operate under 
the fiscal year 2013 CR, but in many areas we will not be working off a 
backward-looking document. For the remainder of the year at least, 
because of the work of this committee, we can look at a forward-looking 
document.
  Again, I congratulate Chairwoman Mikulski and Ranking Member Shelby 
and the Appropriations Committee for working so hard together with 
House colleagues to put us in this posture. A true appropriations 
approach to the remainder of fiscal year 2013 fixes many of the DOD 
problems I outlined earlier. For example, it will allow us to go 
forward on the shipbuilding contract to construct a second Ford class 
carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy. That will be wonderful news for our 
defense and wonderful news for the shipyard that is the largest private 
employer in Virginia. It will allow us to move forward on significant 
ship refurbishment and repair contracts. The repair and refueling of 
the USS Roosevelt and the USS Lincoln were delayed as a result of the 
uncertainty about the budget, but the work this committee is doing will 
enable us to move forward.
  We will be able to not completely eliminate the operations and 
maintenance deficits but at least make moves

[[Page S1679]]

among those accounts to mitigate the effects of the O&M deficit, and 
that will be across service branches.
  Just last Friday, as I left the Senate and drove back to my home in 
Richmond, I stopped and did an economic development tour with a 
contractor in the Fredericksburg area working on robotics projects for 
all of the service branches. They talked about the fact that the CR was 
really putting a crimp in their planned expansions, their ability to 
hire students who are graduating from engineering programs around 
Virginia and around the Nation this fall. The CR fix going forward will 
give this company and so many others some certainty that will enable 
them to do the work we need to do and also help expand employment.
  Other agencies have a similar upside from the fix of this fiscal year 
2013 CR, as Chairwoman Mikulski was just outlining--improvements in 
domestic nutrition; improvements in international food aid, which is 
not only good for the most vulnerable people in the world but also good 
for the American farmer; improvements in State and local law 
enforcement support, immigration enforcement, workforce training, early 
childhood education. There are many aspects of this fix going forward 
that are far preferable to the CR and certainly preferable to flirting 
around the possibility of any kind of a shutdown after March 27. That 
is why I strongly support the approach the Appropriations Committee, 
under its leadership, has worked on. It is good for the United States 
and good for Virginia, and it represents a move to forward-looking 
budgeting rather than plays out of last year's playbook.
  Make no mistake, the sequester is still in place, and the sequester 
is still having significant effects. The fiscal year 2013 
appropriations bill we are discussing will mitigate the effects, but 
there will still be an operations and maintenance shortfall within DOD. 
Every service is still facing potential cuts in training and other 
readiness functions that should cause us concern.
  Last Monday, a week ago yesterday, I went to the Pentagon and visited 
with Secretary Hagel, Deputy Secretary Carter, General Odierno, spent 
time with General Welsh last week, and not just with the brass but then 
went down into the cafeteria and heard the real deal from folks who 
were having lunch, and these were Active Duty assigned to the Pentagon, 
DOD civilian, Guard men and women who were back just coincidently to do 
training-related meetings that day, and veterans who were back having 
lunch with their friends. As I went table to table and talked about 
sequester, I heard about continuing effects and concerns regarding the 
furlough of defense civilians and potential cuts to contractors. So 
those are still out there, but the good news is that this bill will 
address and improve, and then we have a second chance to do so as well 
as we begin in short order to deal with a proposed fiscal year 2013 
budget.

  There is a strong budget process already underway that will bear 
fruit in the committee within the next couple of days. The Budget 
Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Murray, has worked very 
hard, and it started the process that will lead to committee discussion 
and voting and then amendment and debate later this week. The basic 
goal of what we are trying to do is pretty simple, under the chairman's 
direction: Let's grow the economy and create jobs while reducing our 
deficit and debt in an economically credible way.
  If we do this right, together with the appropriations approach 
discussed today, we can help reduce and then shape the negative effect 
that sequester has had on the Commonwealth and the country by replacing 
a blunt, nonstrategic, across-the-board set of cuts with more strategic 
and targeted approaches.
  We have a long way to go, obviously, whether it is on finding the 
path forward just on this bill--and it looks as if there is very strong 
bipartisan support, and that is positive--but certainly on moving 
forward with the budget and the possibility of finding some compromise 
with the House. There are going to be vast differences in the 
approaches, and we cannot sugarcoat that. But I think it is maybe 
important at least to stop and acknowledge some positive steps.
  At year end, before I joined the body, the two Houses did come 
together and they found a compromise on the Bush tax cuts, which was 
positive. There were things not to like about it, but the fact of 
compromise was a positive. The House agreed earlier in calendar year 
2013 that they would not use the debt ceiling as leverage over the 
American economy or leverage over these discussions. That, in an 
earlier instance, led to America's credit being downgraded, so stepping 
away from that is positive. In the Senate, we are returning to normal 
budgetary order under normal timing, and that is a positive step. Both 
sides have agreed to avoid brinkmanship surrounding government shutdown 
on March 27 and have worked assiduously to avoid it. This compromise to 
the fiscal year 2013 CR and the willingness to move forward in a true 
appropriations approach for the rest of the year in these key 
government functions is so positive. And the prospects, which I think 
are very good, of both Houses actually producing budgets on time for 
the first time in a number of years is also positive.
  So while there are real and significant differences, and we will lay 
those on the table and debate them with vigor over the next few days 
and weeks, the American public will see this process unfold. They 
expect us to debate, listen, and find reasonable compromises. We have 
seen some, just in the last few days--I guess I will conclude and say 
this: We have seen some recent positive economic news--the jobs report 
Friday, some of the news about housing, the stock market. There are 
some positive economic trends that are starting to develop. Congress 
can accelerate these trends. Congress can accelerate the improvement of 
the American economy if we keep taking these reasonable steps forward 
to find a responsible budgetary path. This work on the CR bill to find 
an appropriations path for the remainder of the year is one of those 
positive steps, and I applaud the committee leadership for doing so.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Virginia for 
his comments. He and Senator Warner are on the other side of the 
Potomac, and sometimes we are friends, sometimes we are rivals. But it 
is such a dynamic State. The junior Senator from Virginia knows his 
State has some of the greatest Federal assets there--the Pentagon, the 
Central Intelligence Agency. It is a home of vibrant technology. That 
is why we sometimes come as rivals.
  But I want to ask a question of the Senator from Virginia, if the 
Senator will yield?
  Mr. KAINE. I yield.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. When we are moving the continuing resolution and he 
talks about being in the cafeteria and going table to table, which is 
something I do myself, and I know he enjoys it,--is it his point that 
we protect the men and women in uniform but the civilian employees, 
many of whom are veterans, would be at risk?
  Mr. KAINE. Absolutely. I am just coming from an armed services 
hearing, I say to Senator Mikulski, where we were talking about that 
very same thing. The armed services mission, of course, requires that 
we protect the men and women in uniform. But so many of the DOD 
civilians are absolutely critical in doing their appropriate jobs. 
Sixty percent of the staff, for example, our strategic men, STRATCOM, 
are civilian employees. They are doing some of the most important work 
that we need done in the country right now around cyber security. The 
nurses who care for the wounded warriors I visited at Fort Belvoir 
Hospital, for example, are DOD civilians. So the furloughs that affect, 
more broadly, the civilian employees should be reason for significant 
concern.
  Again, we are taking a positive step toward addressing some of these 
issues by embracing the appropriations approach that the Senator has 
worked on, and we will have an additional ability to take a positive 
step with respect to the fiscal year 2014 budget.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. So just to prove our policy goal here, we cannot have 
government funding expire. The consequences of a government shutdown 
would be horrendous. What would it be on the Virginia economy?

[[Page S1680]]

  Mr. KAINE. I say to the Senator, it is impossible----
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Speaking from the old days as a Governor.
  Mr. KAINE. It is like the old commercial about the price of various 
things but some things are priceless. There is no way to estimate it. 
Just off the top of my head, there have been analyses of the degree to 
which the Federal budget impacts the economy in each State, and the 
most recent, done by Bloomberg about 16 months ago, had Virginia as the 
State most affected by the Federal budget. So the prospect of more 
brinkmanship around shutdown, which has happened in the past, even if 
it does not occur, creates great anxiety. But if it were to occur, 
whether it is the nurses caring for our wounded warriors, whether it is 
the researchers helping us to figure out how to stay ahead of the cyber 
attacks that are frankly happening to our Nation every day, or whether 
it is the shipyard repairers at Newport News Shipyard who manufacture 
the largest in manufactured items in the world, nuclear aircraft 
carriers, which should be a story of American pride, who would find 
their jobs at risk--a shutdown and even the negative consequences of 
playing out of last year's CR, which is backward-looking rather than 
forward-looking, are significant. And that is why turning and facing 
forward is the approach we should take.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator for his insightful and cogent 
comments. He is a great fighter from Virginia. I look forward to 
working with the Senator from Virginia--just as I have worked with 
Senator Shelby--where there is no brinkmanship, no ultimatums. We just 
want to get the job done. We need to do our job so other people get to 
do their job so America keeps rolling.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. BEGICH. Madam President, I would like to speak for 15 minutes on 
the topic of revenue sharing.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BEGICH. Madam President, I did not come to the floor today to 
speak on the appropriations and CR, but I want to thank the chairwoman 
and ranking member for working in a bipartisan way. They are working on 
finding a solution and an ability to ensure that at the end of the day 
we can keep this government operating and moving forward, and I thank 
them for that.

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