[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 7, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3102-S3104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE SEQUESTER
Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, on March 19 of this year, the Minneapolis
Star Tribune reported that Minnesota's tribal school districts were
making plans to cut the school year short, increase class sizes, and
let staff vacancies go unfilled. The White Earth Reservation is
planning to consolidate its sixth, seventh, and eighth grades into a
single class starting in the fall. This is happening because of the
sequester.
On April 11, WDAZ, Channel 8 in Grand Forks, reported that special
education programs in my State of Minnesota were going to be hit by a
$90 million cut. This is particularly painful in the Crookston, MN,
school district, where 20 percent of students benefit from special
education programming. This is happening because of the sequester.
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On April 17, Minnesota Public Radio reported that budget cuts were
affecting our court system. Across the country, access to public
defenders, a constitutionally guaranteed right, is becoming more
difficult. This is happening because of the sequester.
It is not just happening in Minnesota, it is happening around the
country. To take just two examples from the many I could cite from
every State in the Nation, on March 13, the AP reported that an Indiana
Head Start program was forced to use a random drawing to determine
which 36 children would be cut from their program. On March 31, the
Portland Press Herald in Maine reported that a local Meals on Wheels
program, which had never before turned away a senior in need, was now
using a waiting list and reducing the number of meals delivered to
existing participants.
Then, on April 25, the Senate passed a bill to allow the Department
of Transportation to shift funds from one account to another, therefore
exempting DOT from the strict across-the-board cuts mandated by the
sequester. The funding shift was needed to prevent the furlough of air
traffic controllers, which was beginning to cause a significant
inconvenience to American travelers and could have had harmful effects
on our economy. The House passed the bill the next day and it has now
been enacted into law.
I am pleased American travelers were spared this inconvenience, but
as the reports I just cited from Minnesota and from elsewhere would
suggest, there are a lot of people suffering needlessly because of the
sequester.
A case-by-case approach is not the right way to handle the impacts of
the sequester. The sequester, in fact, was designed to affect every
government function equally, with just a few exceptions, and the
extreme across-the-board nature of these cuts is the very definition of
a thoughtless approach to deficit reduction. The sequester was designed
to be replaced and that is what we must do. Just as the sequester
affects every government function equally, our response to the
sequester should be complete and inclusive, not piecemeal. We must
replace the entire sequester with a mix of new revenues and smarter
targeted cuts that do not inflict needless pain on those who can least
bear it and that do not harm our ongoing fragile economic recovery.
There are both moral and economic consequences of allowing the
sequester to continue. As Hubert Humphrey said:
The moral test of government is how that Government treats
those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who
are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in
the shadow of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
If we ignore the effects of sequester cuts on the voiceless and
address only the sequester cuts that are the most visible--in the form
of longer lines at the airport, for example--we will have failed that
moral test.
In April I received a letter from a family service worker with Head
Start from Onamia, MN. She wrote:
The families I work with have no idea what it means to have
trillions of dollars cut from the budget. They are trying
hard to keep $10 in their pockets or checkbook. . . . These
cuts would be particularly catastrophic to the poor children
and families we serve. . . . Congress and the Administration
need to act quickly to restore fiscal stability and maintain
funding for our at-risk children. Our nation's budget simply
cannot be balanced on the backs of poor children.
Here is a letter I received from a mother in Hoffman, a rural
community in West Central Minnesota. She wrote:
My heart was saddened today when I learned that due to a
sequester, my 4 year old daughter's Head Start program was to
end 2 weeks ahead of schedule, that 2 of her amazing teachers
will be looking for work come May 30th and her head teacher
will be having to take on a 2nd job to compensate for a pay
cut she took to continue with the program. Our Head Start
program is an amazing program. My daughter has benefited from
this program in ways a mother can only dream of and only a
classroom environment can provide. The fear that it maybe not
be there for her next year sickens me. We may not have the
numbers that are looked at when these kinds of decisions are
made, but our program is one of a kind with teachers that are
so special they deserve awards. My daughter wants them to
come to her birthday party. The people making these decisions
need to actually go to the class rooms, see what goes on.
Visit again and see the difference this program and these
women are making in these kids' lives. The decision makers
need to see what it is they are choosing to take away from
these young people. I will be writing a letter to all of my
local reps, and I'm committed to send them letters once a
week until my pleas are heard and our government stops taking
money and the education that comes with that from our rural
school!
That is a story from a mother based on her experience with her
daughter.
Economists agree and studies have demonstrated that high-quality
early education programs can produce anywhere from $7 to $16 in
benefits for every dollar of Federal investment. The return on
investment comes from the long-term savings associated with a quality
early childhood education.
A child who has a quality early childhood education is less likely to
be in special education, less likely to be left back a grade, has
better health outcomes, and girls are less likely to get pregnant
before they graduate high school. They are more likely to graduate from
high school, more likely to graduate from college, more likely to have
a better paying job, pay taxes on that job, and much less likely to go
to prison.
If we care about the long-term sustainability of our debt, we should
be putting more money into quality early childhood education, not less,
as we are doing because of the sequester.
Here is a letter from Columbia Heights, MN:
As someone who has worked with seniors my entire career and
now volunteers to deliver meals on wheels, I would encourage
your support of this program and discourage cuts. This
program is one that allows seniors and disabled adults to
remain in their home and still receive proper nutrition. For
many it is also the only contact they may have with someone
during any given day. While providing a service it is also a
means to check in on these individuals' well-being. By
eliminating or making significant cuts to this program we
would be turning our backs on many of our citizens.
I am sure every Member of the Senate has received similar letters--
letters begging us to protect funding that assists poor children and
the elderly in their communities. It is not just Head Start and Meals
on Wheels which suffer as a result of the sequester, it affects so many
other critical programs.
HUD estimates that sequester cuts could result in 100,000 formerly
homeless people, including veterans, being removed from their housing
and shelter programs and putting them back at risk for homelessness.
The USDA estimated that it will result in 600,000 fewer participants in
WIC, the nutrition program for mothers and their children.
Replacing the sequester is the right thing to do. The sequester is a
perfect example of the moral test of government Hubert Humphrey talked
about, and replacing it is the only conceivable response to it we can
have as Americans. But apart from failing to protect our most
vulnerable, the sequester cuts also do direct harm to our economy and
prevent us from making the critical investments in education,
infrastructure, and innovation that have always been what has made
America great and prosperous.
As Secretary Arne Duncan wrote in a letter to Chairwoman Barbara
Mikulski about the effects of the sequester:
Education is the last place to be reducing our investment
as the nation continues to climb out of the recent recession
and to prepare all of its citizens to meet the challenges
created by global economic competitors in the 21st century.
Indeed, I can assure you that our economic competitors are
increasing, not decreasing, their investments in education,
and we can ill afford to fall behind as a consequence of
indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts that would be required
by sequestration.
Secretary Duncan goes on to explain that the sequester will create
particular hardships for recipients of Impact Aid, which includes
schools that serve the Native American students and children of
military families.
In addition to investing in education, we should be building up and
repairing our Nation's infrastructure. Cuts to the Economic Development
Administration will hinder the ability to leverage private sector
resources to support infrastructure projects that spur local job
creation--likely resulting in 1,000 fewer jobs created nationwide. The
Department of Interior has warned that the sequester will delay high
priority dam safety modifications.
Finally, America has always been at the cutting edge of global
technologies, but the sequester may change that. Cuts to the National
Institute of Standards and Technology will force
[[Page S3104]]
NIST to end its work on the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, which
helps small manufacturers innovate in their business practices and
develop market growth at home and abroad.
The Department of Education is the operator of 10 world-class
national laboratories that specialize in developing advanced commercial
technologies. DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, has
achieved several remarkable breakthroughs in recent years, such as
doubling the energy density of lithium batteries, increasing the
capacity of high-power transistors, engineering microbes that can turn
hydrogen and carbon dioxide into transportation fuel. Sequester cuts
are going to slow and curb our Nation's progress toward a 21st century
energy sector.
Not only does the sequester fail to invest in things that make
America great and make America grow, the sequester is also costing the
government more money for the same product in the long run. There are
certain weapon systems that DOD knows it needs and will purchase in the
future; however, because of sequestration, they have canceled the
contract order for the time being. As a result, the manufacturer has
shut down that production line and possibly terminated jobs. Restarting
that process is expensive, and those costs are ultimately passed on to
us, the government--the American people.
I urge my colleagues to rethink the current strategy of addressing
the sequester crisis by crisis and whatever is on the front page of the
news. It ultimately is not equitable. It disadvantages our Nation's
most vulnerable and it is harming our economy.
In February, CBO's Doug Elmendorf testified that the effects of
sequestration would reduce employment by 750,000 jobs this year. That
is the opposite direction we need our job numbers to go during our
economic recovery. I have not even been able to touch on the risk the
defense sequester poses to our military readiness in my remarks here
today.
The bottom line is we need to address every facet of the sequester
together with a mix of new revenues and smarter targeted cuts. We
should meet every new, high-visible consequence of the sequester with
the same response. It is more evidence that we need to replace the
entire sequester.
Democrats have put forward a plan to address the most immediate
consequences of the sequester with a mix of new revenues and targeted
cuts to replace the first year of sequestration, and it garnered a
majority in the Senate. But because a majority is not enough to pass
legislation in today's Senate when the minority chooses to obstruct,
that plan failed to pass.
What we have passed in the Senate is a budget that proposes to
replace the entire sequester in a balanced way that would also spare
the most vulnerable pain and protect our economic recovery and our
economic future. That is the kind of approach we need to take.
I hope in the days ahead we can begin a dialogue about fixing this
problem so kids in Minnesota, Indiana, and in the Presiding Officer's
State of Hawaii--kids all around the country--can return to Head Start.
We need to help the senior citizens in Maine so they can get off the
Meals on Wheels waiting list. We address this issue so that Minnesota's
tribal school districts can finish out the school year as scheduled.
When we hear about the next highly visible problem the sequester has
caused, we should think about all the problems the sequester has
caused, and that is what I will be doing. We need to fix the problem in
a comprehensive and balanced way.
I stand ready to work with my colleagues and achieve that
comprehensive and balanced fix for the sequester.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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