[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 124 (Thursday, September 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5755-H5758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright) is 
recognized for 55 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening on behalf of the 
Congressional Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance the calls made 
by our colleagues today to end the disastrous spending cuts known as 
sequestration, to put a stop to the proposed disastrous cuts to SNAP 
benefits, and to urge the majority to abandon their plans to force the 
closure of the government and to default on the national debt.
  I want to start with SNAP. Mr. Speaker, while nearly 50 million 
Americans struggle to put food on their tables, the majority are 
doubling their cuts to basic food aid, Supplemental Nutrition 
Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, which primarily helps children, 
seniors, and the disabled.
  Mr. Speaker, 92 percent of the people who are on SNAP are children, 
the elderly, disabled, or already working. Food stamp recipients 
currently receive just $1.40 per meal. SNAP is a vital tool to prevent 
hunger, fight hunger, and help struggling Americans feed their families 
as they seek new employment, send their children to school, and get 
themselves back on their feet.
  Slashing nearly $40 billion from SNAP, the majority bill takes the 
food out of the mouths of nearly 4 million Americans next year, 
particularly harming children, seniors, veterans, and Americans living 
in urban, rural, and suburban communities with chronically high 
unemployment. One in five children--that is 16 million children--
struggle with hunger, a record high.
  Mr. Speaker, here to address the effects of the SNAP cuts that we are 
talking about today is my valued and esteemed colleague from 
California, Representative Alan Lowenthal.
  Congressman Lowenthal was elected to represent the 47th District of 
California after a long and distinguished career both in city politics 
and in the California State Assembly in Sacramento. Congressman 
Lowenthal serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as 
with me on the House Committee on Natural Resources. Congressman 
Lowenthal has stood up as a loud voice against cuts to the SNAP 
program. He has been quoted in the press as saying, ``These cuts 
literally take the food from the mouths of babes.''
  At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Lowenthal).
  Mr. LOWENTHAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 
and I appreciate his leadership in holding this vital conversation.
  During my two decades in public service, I've heard many stories 
about how, when the economy slows down and when Americans fall on hard 
times, the American social safety net has helped our fellow Americans 
get back on their feet again.
  I want to talk a little bit today, my dear friend, about what a 
constituent told me. I want to talk about his personal food stamp 
success, a story that really illustrates how SNAP is an investment in 
the future success of Americans.

                              {time}  2015

  This young man, whose name is Stefan, from Long Beach, recently wrote 
to me. He said:
  My parents, after graduating from college in the mid-seventies, had 
to rely on food stamps for a period. They eventually went on to 
complete advanced degrees and began to have wonderful and productive 
jobs in the private sector and in higher education,

[[Page H5756]]

but they are both now quick to acknowledge the essential helping hand 
that food stamps--and also, for this young man, the WIC program for 
both his sister and him--played in helping them when times were tough.
  Let us just remember what took place today, because these two 
Americans were low-income, childless adults at the time. It was for a 
very short period in their lives that they were low-income and also 
childless as adults. However, let us remember that this is one of the 
categories of people from whom the just-passed House bill would strip 
SNAP benefits. Stefan's parents, my friend, did not want to stay on 
food stamps, but food stamps provided them the ability to go on and 
become highly productive members of society because America invested in 
them through the SNAP program.
  Contrary to the majority's claim, poor and unemployed Americans do 
not--and I repeat ``do not''--want to remain unemployed in order to 
receive a meager $1.40 per meal. That argument is specious. It paints a 
false picture of the masses of people who would rather have less than 6 
quarters per meal than a paying job. This is not a rational choice. No 
one chooses the 6 quarters. These are people who need America's support 
and investment in order to survive.
  Mr. CARTWRIGHT. Mr. Lowenthal, to your point about no one would 
choose to take meals for 6 quarters and that no one would choose to 
remain on SNAP benefits, there is this myth running around that we hear 
all the time that people abuse SNAP benefits--that people are buying 
crab legs and lobster tails with their food stamps.
  What is your opinion on that?
  Mr. LOWENTHAL. My dear colleague from Pennsylvania, I agree that it's 
absolutely ludicrous.
  On $1.40 per meal, you are not having lobster dinners. You are not 
having real dinners. You are barely surviving. These are proud people 
who want to make a contribution to society, who went through a 
difficult period. As this son pointed out, after their getting through 
this difficult time, they moved on after receiving these benefits, 
which they proudly talk about how much they helped them, and they are 
now productive members of our society and contribute greatly to this 
society. It is fallacious and silly to think that people choose to be 
on SNAP because they want to exploit the system.
  I want to talk a little bit about who our Congressional Budget Office 
estimates the bill that just passed today would deny SNAP benefits to.
  First of all, it would deny SNAP benefits to over 3.8 million of our 
fellow Americans in the year 2014. Now, who are these poor, unemployed, 
childless Americans that this bill largely targets? According to the 
nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 40 percent are 
women; 34 percent are over 40 years of age; 50 percent are white; 30 
percent are African American; 10 percent are Hispanic; and 5 percent 
are Native American; 40 percent live in suburban areas; 40 percent live 
in urban areas; and 20 percent live in rural areas.
  I would like to say, Mr. Speaker, that SNAP is an investment in 
America's workers, both current and prospective. To gut that 
investment--to let Americans go hungry--is to deny each of them an 
opportunity to become a contributing member of our society. This is not 
how America takes care of its people.
  Mr. CARTWRIGHT. I want to thank the gentleman from California for 
really bringing home the point of the importance of SNAP benefits to 
our Nation, the validity of the program and the ridiculousness of the 
cuts that were passed out of the House today.
  Instead of working to create jobs here at home, the majority is 
punishing people in America. It's pushing punishing legislation that 
abandons Americans who want to work but who can't find jobs. Even in 
communities with high unemployment, with double-digit unemployment, 
adults who can't find at least a half-time job under this bill would be 
thrown off SNAP after 3 months regardless of how high local 
unemployment is.
  Now, this is unnecessary. SNAP currently has work requirements that 
can be waived by the States during times of high unemployment. Forty-
six States, including almost every State with a Republican Governor, 
sought waivers in fiscal year '13 to provide SNAP for those looking for 
work--and repeatedly so over the last 10 years.
  The bottom line here is that the bill that passed out of the House 
today on SNAP--cutting SNAP benefits close to $40 billion over the next 
10 years--is radical, and it won't pass into law. The Senate will not 
take up such a bill. The President would never sign it. It's radical, 
and it's a waste of time. By imposing such draconian cuts, the majority 
is really derailing any chance at the enactment of a responsible new 
bill, critical legislation to support our Nation's farmers and 
ranchers, to support food security, conservation, rural communities, 
and the 16 million Americans whose jobs directly depend on the 
agriculture industry. These majority cuts are almost 10 times those in 
the Senate bill, and they would make any chance at a bipartisan 
agreement on a much-needed farm bill nearly impossible.
  I want to share with you some of the statistics from my own district 
in northeastern Pennsylvania. I represent the 17th Congressional 
District. This consists of six counties. In these six counties, we have 
fully 39,000 households receiving SNAP benefits at this time--an 
incredible number of people who really rely on these benefits, who use 
them to alleviate hunger and to prevent the situation in which kids are 
going to school hungry every day. The average monthly household SNAP 
participation in Pennsylvania in 2011 was 815,765 people. The average 
monthly household SNAP participation in the United States in 2011, 
according to the USDA, was 21 million people in this country. In my 
district, over 14 percent of the households rely on SNAP benefits. 
These draconian cuts would go right to the heart of real people in my 
district.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to switch gears, and I want to talk about the 
sequester. I want to enhance the calls by our colleagues in the 
Congressional Progressive Caucus to end the disastrous spending cuts 
called ``sequester.''
  It has been months since these across-the-board cuts have gone into 
effect, devastating many important programs that Americans rely on 
every day. The purpose, of course, of the sequestration was to create a 
scheme of cuts so odious that Congress would do anything possible to 
avoid them, that Congress would be forced to come together and agree on 
a responsible budget. It was like a ticking time bomb that would force 
the Members of this House to come together, Mr. Speaker, and arrive at 
a reasonable compromise on an American budget; but the time bomb went 
off, and sequestration went into effect.
  The bottom line here is that sequestration is going to cost 750,000 
American jobs because of the disaster it wreaks on the American 
economy. That's not my figure. That's the figure put out by the 
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--750,000 American jobs.
  The majority's effort to make sequestration a reality shows it is 
ready, willing, and able to take our economy backward at a time when 
Americans are desperate to move this Nation forward. That's just 
missing the point. The majority has shown a willingness to vote on a 
fix for the front-page news FAA flight delay problem, but it hasn't 
addressed the 70,000 children who would lose access to Head Start or 
any of the other programs that have been crippled. Programs and 
services that millions of Americans rely on, like Head Start and even 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency program, are being decimated by 
draconian cuts in funding.
  Funding for the FEMA agency has been slashed by over $1 billion under 
sequester. Just as hurricane season began, cuts for the NOAA, the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will delay its weather 
satellite launch, causing an increase in cost to the program and an 
increased risk of inaccurate forecasts for future extreme weather. 
Public safety is being put at risk. It's also being put at risk as the 
U.S. Forest Service is facing fire season understaffed and 
underequipped with 500 fewer firefighters, 50 to 70 fewer fire engines, 
and two fewer aircraft. In fact, our transportation infrastructure in 
the United States is threatened by the sequester. The U.S. Department 
of Transportation will face $1.943 billion in total budget cuts; and 
Amtrak, too, was cut by $77 million under the sequester.

[[Page H5757]]

  The services that keep us healthy are being hurt, including important 
mental health programs that are delivered through the Substance Abuse 
and Mental Health Services Administration, which will be cut by $168 
million at a time when many are looking to expand mental health 
services to keep our communities safer, including communities like 
Washington, D.C. Food safety is being compromised as the Food and Drug 
Administration, the FDA, has to perform fewer inspections, increasing 
the risk of foodborne illness. Funding for NIH, the National Institutes 
of Health, shrunk by $1.5 billion. Remember what the NIH does. It does 
lifesaving medical research. Every single area of medical research in 
this country will be affected, including research to cure breast 
cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease. The cuts from NIH alone 
will result in a loss of more than 20,000 jobs and $3 billion in 
economic activity in this country. A $285 million cut from the Centers 
for Disease Control research compromises our ability to detect and 
combat disease outbreaks, to facilitate immunizations, to plan for 
public health emergencies, and to conduct HIV and AIDS tests.
  Critical support to everything, from putting police on our streets to 
agents at our borders, has been jeopardized. Our Federal public 
defenders are being furloughed, undermining the services that the 
already overburdened Federal courts face and forcing courts to hire 
private attorneys for defendants on an ad hoc basis at as much as $125 
an hour. It's being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

                              {time}  2030

  As for our national security, 800,000 Department of Defense civilian 
employees--including in my home district, where we have the Tobyhanna 
Army Depot--are facing 11 days of furloughs. These are families that 
are already struggling to make ends meet, to pay their mortgages, make 
their car payments, that try to put their kids through college. Eleven 
days of furloughs for these faithful employees of civilian defense 
contractors just isn't right. The Department of Defense budget was 
slashed by a total of $37 billion this year, hurting economic growth in 
this Nation, among many other consequences.
  In short, these cuts are putting the ability of our government to 
fully perform basic government functions that we need to keep us safe 
at risk. There are personal consequences. I represent Carbon County, 
Pennsylvania, in my district. Kim Henry from Carbon County is a 
participant in Head Start. Head Start doesn't just educate preschool 
children. It also educates and helps entire families. Head Start for 
Kim Henry in Carbon County helped her to figure out how to deal with 
situations she was facing struggling as a single mother, separated from 
her son's father. She was having a problem with her living 
arrangements. She was having a problem putting meals on the table. She 
was having trouble communicating her needs and figuring out how to get 
along in life as a single mother. Head Start, through its healthy 
family relationship singles workshop, helped her figure these things 
out.
  We put too much on public schools in this country. We expect teachers 
to solve problems that parents need to solve. Kids don't come with 
instruction manuals, and a lot of times people need some guidance on 
how to be parents. Head Start helps provide that information, and it 
helped Kim Henry get her life back on track and get her relationship 
with her child back on track so that she's going to be a responsible 
parent and she's going to guide her child into being a responsible 
adult herself.
  Meals on Wheels is cut by sequester, as well, not just Head Start. By 
the way, Head Start in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, alone, 49 kids alone 
are being asked to leave Head Start in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 
because of the sequester cuts. They're never going to be 3 and 4 years 
old again. They're never going to have a chance to replay their time 
that they had to be in preschool. And they're going to spend their 
entire academic careers playing catchup with the other kids who have 
preschool. You know what that means. It means that they lose confidence 
in themselves as they struggle to keep up with the other kids, and they 
question their own ability to hang in there academically and to achieve 
and make the most of themselves. It's a big deal that kids get 
preschool through Head Start. When we cut kids from Head Start because 
of sequester, it's being penny-wise and pound-foolish because everybody 
knows that statistics show that the people who do worse academically, 
who struggle and fail academically, are way more likely to enter the 
criminal justice system in one form or another. It's a truth that is 
proven time and time again. The way to handle this problem is nip these 
problems in the bud, make good students out of kids, and do it through 
Head Start. Let's not cut these things.
  Meals on Wheels is another great American program. In Scranton, 
Pennsylvania, which I represent, Meals on Wheels is a very important 
program. It doesn't just provide meals for seniors; it also provides 
socialization. People are showing up at seniors' homes and talking with 
them and communicating with them and checking in on them.
  It's not just about socialization. It's also about safety. Just 
recently, a Meals on Wheels volunteer in Scranton was delivering a meal 
to an elderly man who didn't come to his door. The volunteer was 
concerned, looked through the window, and saw the man lying unconscious 
on his floor in his home. This volunteer was able to summon help, get 
the man medical help, get him to the hospital, and basically save his 
life. Meals on Wheels isn't just about a meal, it's about 
communication, it's about checking up on people who don't have other 
people to check up on them.
  Old Forge, Pennsylvania, is another town that I represent. A 
different Meals on Wheels volunteer in Old Forge was delivering food 
during winter to an elderly woman and noticed that she came to the door 
wearing a parka and mittens and a hat. When the volunteer inquired as 
to why she was wearing that, as if she had to, the woman replied that 
she didn't have any heat. That volunteer was able to make contact with 
the appropriate social service agencies, figure out how to get the heat 
turned back on, and the heat was turned back on. Again, a potentially 
dangerous situation for the elderly woman was averted. Why? Because of 
Meals on Wheels. It makes no sense for us to cut Meals on Wheels. The 
people who are suffering by these cuts are our seniors. We need to be 
honoring our seniors, not cutting their benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, while the sequestration process has obviously already 
begun, it is not too late to work together to change course. On behalf 
of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I say we must change course. 
We can't take these sequester cuts and plan on living with them ad 
infinitum. It makes no sense. It's the wrong solution for America.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to address on behalf of the Congressional 
Progressive Caucus the question about Congress acting to avoid another 
shutdown showdown. Once again, a deadline looms before the United 
States Congress, and once again the majority is set to play politics by 
threatening to shut down the Federal Government rather than work toward 
a budget compromise. Instead of working together to develop a budget 
that is going to work for all Americans, the majority is letting 
extremists and ideologues drive the agenda.
  Just last month, we marked an inauspicious anniversary: Standard & 
Poor's downgrading the full faith and credit of the United States of 
America. So we have two things going on: we have the majority trying to 
extract political concessions in exchange for keeping the doors of 
America's government open and in exchange for America not defaulting on 
its national debt.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the United States of America. We pay our bills. 
We pay our bills, and we pay them on time. That's what preserves the 
full faith and credit of the United States, it preserves our 
creditworthiness, and it prevents our interest rates from skyrocketing 
because that is exactly what will happen if we default on the national 
debt. Our interest rates will go through the roof, and it will cause 
not an immediate recession, but an immediate depression. That is 
ridiculous, to hold the national debt hostage in that fashion because 
you're not just holding the debt ceiling hostage, you are holding the 
American economy and the welfare

[[Page H5758]]

of every single American hostage, as well. We cannot let that happen. 
It is the most ridiculous thing. To have that held hostage for 
political gain, for political ideological purposes, is simply 
unacceptable.
  Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I 
urge my fellow colleagues in the House to abandon this plan to hold 
hostage the American full faith and credit, the American 
creditworthiness, and the American economy on the basis that it's a 
good way to extract political concessions for what the ideologues in 
this House are after.
  Mr. Speaker, instead of working together to do our jobs and resolve 
these critical issues, the majority are staking out a decidedly 
different approach from working together. In fact, Speaker Boehner has 
indicated that he is gearing up for ``a whale of a fight'' to push the 
interests of the majority's right flank ahead of the needs of the 
American people. In fact, Mr. Boehner has been vocal about his plans to 
use the need to raise that debt limit to call for cuts to the programs 
that we've been discussing, the programs that help American families. 
As Speaker Boehner said, ``I'll say this: It may be unfair, but what 
I'm trying to do here is to leverage the political process.''
  Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I 
say, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Back off of that extreme 
approach. Back off of that dangerous approach. Holding hostage the 
entire American Government and holding hostage the American interest 
rate and economy doesn't make sense. Let's work together and figure out 
our problems in a responsible, reasonable, and a measured manner. We 
can do that. And on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I 
say we must do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________