[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.

[[Page S3103]]

  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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