[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
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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?
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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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