[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.
____________________