[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 25 (Tuesday, February 11, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H1739-H1741]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      EXTENSION OF DIRECT SPENDING REDUCTION FOR FISCAL YEAR 2024

  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass 
the bill (S. 25) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to convey 
certain Federal features of the electric distribution system to the 
South Utah Valley Electric Service District, and for other purposes, as 
amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                                 S. 25

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. EXTENSION OF DIRECT SPENDING REDUCTION FOR FISCAL 
                   YEAR 2024.

       Paragraph (6)(B) of section 251A of the Balanced Budget and 
     Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (2 U.S.C. 901a) is 
     amended by striking ``and for fiscal year 2023'' and by 
     inserting ``, for fiscal year 2023, and for fiscal year 
     2024''.

     SEC. 2. INAPPLICABILITY OF REDUCED ANNUAL ADJUSTMENT OF 
                   RETIRED PAY FOR MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES 
                   UNDER THE AGE OF 62 UNDER THE BIPARTISAN BUDGET 
                   ACT OF 2013 WHO FIRST BECAME MEMBERS PRIOR TO 
                   JANUARY 1, 2014.

       (a) In General.--Section 1401a(b)(4) of title 10, United 
     States Code, as added by section 403(a) of the Bipartisan 
     Budget Act of 2013 (Public Law 113-67) and amended by section 
     10001 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014 
     (Public Law 113-76), is amended by adding at the end the 
     following new subparagraph:
       ``(G) Members covered.--This paragraph applies to a member 
     or former member of an armed force who first became a member 
     of a uniformed service on or after January 1, 2014.''.
       (b) Effective Date.--The amendment made by subsection (a) 
     shall take effect on December 1, 2015, immediately after the 
     coming into effect of section 403 of the Bipartisan Budget 
     Act of 2013 and the amendments made by that section.

     SEC. 3. TRANSITIONAL FUND FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH RATE (SGR) 
                   REFORM.

       Section 1898 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395iii) 
     is amended--
       (1) by amending the heading to read as follows: 
     ``transitional fund for sustainable growth rate (sgr) 
     reform'';
       (2) by amending subsection (a) to read as follows:
       ``(a) Establishment.--The Secretary shall establish under 
     this title a Transitional Fund for Sustainable Growth Rate 
     (SGR) Reform (in this section referred to as the `Fund') 
     which shall be available to the Secretary to provide funds to 
     pay for physicians' services under part B to supplement the 
     conversion factor under section 1848(d) for 2017 if the 
     conversion factor for 2017 is less than conversion factor for 
     2013.'';
       (3) in subsection (b)(1), by striking ``during--'' and all 
     that follows and inserting ``during or after 2017, 
     $2,300,000,000.''; and
       (4) in subsection (b)(2), by striking ``from the Federal'' 
     and all that follows and inserting ``from the Federal 
     Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. 
Smith) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania.


                             General Leave

  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their 
remarks and insert extraneous material on the bill under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, President Washington once said:

       The willingness with which our young people are likely to 
     serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly 
     proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars 
     were appreciated by our Nation.

  There is no doubt that we appreciate the service and sacrifice of 
each generation of veterans, from our original veterans, patriots, to 
those who landed at Normandy during World War II, to present. We as 
Americans and as lawmakers are forever in debt to the dedication of our 
military men and women who bore the pain of battle, physically and 
emotionally.
  While we stand here in this Chamber each day and pledge our 
allegiance to the American flag that they defend, while we are able to 
act as a democratic body freely elected by the people thanks to their 
sacrifices, sometimes simple appreciation isn't enough. We have a 
chance today to treat our veterans with the honor they deserve by 
ensuring that they are fully compensated for their service during 
retirement, while also addressing other concerns facing our Nation.
  Today we will take up the legislation under consideration to ensure 
that all servicemen and -women who are enlisted prior to January 1 of 
this year will receive the full cost of living adjustments in 
retirement before and after the age of 62. Furthermore, this bill also 
ensures our seniors will have access to the health care services they 
depend on through Medicare.
  For too long, the relationship between doctor and patient has been 
strained by the confusion and instability of a well-intentioned but 
unaddressed problem with the Medicare program itself, known as the 
sustainable growth rate or SGR. A component of this legislation works 
to ensure that seniors are able to receive the care they depend on from 
the physicians who know them, while also guaranteeing that those 
physicians are fairly compensated by Medicare through a fund until 
long-term reform of the SGR is achieved this spring. In doing so, this 
legislation provides much-needed stability for the medical community by 
ensuring that physicians have the predictability in billing they need 
to further their practice and to focus on their patients.
  By taking up and passing this legislation in bipartisan fashion, we 
can address areas of critical concern, while working together to make 
sure we are also being fiscally responsible. This legislation provides 
a necessary offset that is in the same vein of the bipartisan budget 
agreement this Chamber passed just over a month ago.
  The American people expect us to make the tough decisions that help 
them in their daily lives, be it a military veteran looking to secure 
his retirement after a lifetime of duty and commitment, to the senior 
making sure their next doctor's visit is free from any undue stress, or 
ensuring that physicians can further their passion of serving their 
community.
  This legislation provides a path forward for our Nation and this body 
in addressing their concerns. I urge full bipartisan support of this 
legislation

[[Page H1740]]

and encourage the whole House to consider the important needs that the 
bill addresses.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  There are a number of problems with this piece of legislation. One of 
the biggest ones is just the process of it. This has been dropped on us 
at the absolute last minute. In fact, on a bill that has profound 
impacts on the budget in a number of different areas, we just, moments 
ago, received a broad outline of a score of how it is going to impact 
that budget--moments ago. We did not have time to consider this 
legislation adequately to figure out what impact it was going to have 
on the budget, but there are a couple of things we do know about it 
that creates a major problem.
  Yes, in the short-term, this pleases two constituency groups. It 
pleases veterans, and it pleases doctors by giving them the money that 
they want. But what was not mentioned in the speech talking about this 
bill in favor of it is how it is paid for. It is paid for by adding 
another year to sequestration.
  Now, there are a couple of interesting things about this. First of 
all, that is 8 years from now. We have heard nothing but, from the 
other side of the aisle, about how government is spending too much 
money, about how the deficit and the debt are out of control, and yet 
here we have up-front money being spent on the promise that 8 years 
from now we will cover those costs. And what is worse, 8 years from 
now, the way we are going to cover those costs is through 
sequestration, across-the-board cuts that will cut other entitlement, 
other mandatory spending programs. So we are really simply robbing one 
group of deserving people to pay another group of deserving people. 
That is hardly responsible and hardly helpful.
  There are a couple of other specific aspects of this that I want to 
mention from the Department of Defense standpoint, focusing now just on 
the portion that addresses the cost of living reduction.
  I want to make sure we understand what exactly that cost of living 
reduction was. In the military, if you serve 20 years, you can retire 
at that point with your full pension, which is basically half of your 
pay at that point. This bill took, for those people between the ages of 
42 and 62, working age, and reduced their COLA by 1 percent. It didn't 
reduce the pension. It reduced how much that pension would be increased 
by each year by 1 percent.
  Now, I don't deny that that is a hit and a cost, but what is it 
offsetting?
  The Pentagon has to pay this cost, or at least a portion of this 
cost. They have to pay--the old bill, and again, I am just getting the 
new score. But in the old bill, it was roughly $700 million a year that 
DOD had to take out of their operating budget and put in to paying for 
this pension. So, by doing this, we are taking roughly $700 million a 
year out of the Pentagon budget.
  What does that mean? What it means is a further blow to readiness. 
Now, Republican and Democratic members of the Armed Services Committee 
have rightly screamed that we are cutting readiness to the point where 
we are not training our forces to prepare to fight the fight that we 
ask them to fight.
  Now, the gentleman made an excellent point that, basically, what is 
going to make people want to sign up for the military? And he mentioned 
making sure that we take care of our veterans. I certainly think that 
is an issue. And I will tell you, for the last 10 years we have 
increased the GI Bill. We have increased pay every single year. We have 
made dramatic increases in combat pay. I applaud this Chamber for the 
bipartisan way in which they have taken care of our military veterans. 
But one other major issue that is going to determine whether or not 
people want to join the military and stay in it is whether or not we 
train them and prepare them for the fight we are going to ask them to 
do. And what the consequences of this are going to be is it is another 
blow to that.

  If you are a pilot, you will not have enough fuel or enough fixed 
equipment to train as often as you need to. If you are an infantryman, 
you will not have the bullets to practice as much as you need to. Doing 
this creates the one thing that everyone has said we don't want, and 
that is a hollow force, a force that exists but is not trained to fight 
the fight that we ask them to do.
  In fact, there is a great and compelling story told by the chairman 
of the Armed Services Committee in an argument for why readiness is 
important, and that was the Korean war, and those were the troops that 
we sent over in the initial effort to stop the North Koreans. Those 
troops were not trained, and men died because they were not trained and 
they were not prepared for a battle that we sent them into.
  So we are robbing one portion of the Pentagon budget to pay another, 
and I think we are robbing precisely the portion that we can least 
afford to rob. And I don't think there is anything noble about standing 
up and taking money away from the readiness that is going to train our 
troops to fight fights that we, as politicians, send them to fight.
  Now, I will say, on the SGR fix and the doc fix, that is a short-term 
problem, and we need to deal with it. Step aside. I would be very, very 
happy to pay for that, and I support that very strongly.
  I do not like the pay-for. Personally, I would be more than willing 
to raise taxes or cut spending in other places other than to, once 
again, go back to the sequester option and also to kick it out 8 years 
from now.
  This is an irresponsible bill that approaches very, very real 
problems. But make no mistake about it. You can stand up and talk about 
what you are paying for, whom you are giving the money to, but I do 
hope people will address whom you are taking the money from. You are 
taking the money from other recipients of mandatory spending by doing 
sequester again. And as importantly, you are taking the money away from 
the readiness accounts that will train our troops so that they are able 
to fight, so that we will hopefully not do the one thing that I think 
would be utterly unconscionable, and that is to send troops to a battle 
that we have not prepared them for.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), though she is in support of 
the bill.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank the gentleman, and I thank the manager of 
this legislation.
  I thank our chairman, our ranking member of the Armed Services 
Committee, for his consistent diligence on acting on behalf of the men 
and women in the United States military, and certainly those who have 
already served.
  I, for one, will associate myself with the disappointment of the 
offset that has been offered in this legislation. No one likes 
sequester.
  I will add an additional point of contention is that this Nation is 
not broke. Economists have said over and over again that we are not 
broke. We can fully fund and should fund our military as it relates to 
preparedness. That is part of protecting the homeland, which I serve on 
the Homeland Security Committee.

                              {time}  1415

  Then of course we all have tried to deliberate on what we can do best 
for our doctors under what we call the SGR, or the doctor fix. Let me 
just say this as I rise to support this legislation, because I do come 
from Texas, and I do interact with veterans across the Nation and 
others.
  As painful as the extending out of the sequester to 2024 was, I just 
want to offer this thought. First of all, as I have argued--and I hope 
maybe the light will come on that we are not broke, that we will rid 
ourselves of the sequester and begin to budget fully to provide 
investment in our people.
  So, the reason for advocating is, as I go home every weekend, and 
throughout the week when I am in the district I will run into military 
personnel and/or veterans, to speak about the impact that this would 
have on them, their families. Certainly I believe that this was one 
that needs to be corrected, and I would like to see us working fairly 
across the board, that we find a way to respond to the high numbers 
that this costs, and as well to work with those with optional ideas. I 
hope before 2024

[[Page H1741]]

we have no sequester. As my good friend has indicated, it is a poor way 
of managing our budget.
  Let me also say, because of the many low-income areas and the 
physicians that I have interacted with, who indicate how difficult it 
is to serve my low-income patients or my patients that are elderly, 
that the doctor fix is crucial for the 18th Congressional District in 
providing health care for those who are in need, particularly those who 
are elderly.
  So, as we look askance at how this has been formulated--and I know 
that it is one that has come to us--but I would hope that we would do 
this fix this time, Mr. Speaker, and then work to undo the offset so 
that we can help seniors and doctors.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, so 
if the gentleman has no further speakers I will close.
  I yield myself the balance of my time just really to drive home one 
point on the Armed Services' side of the equation, and that is the 
impact that personnel costs are having on the Department of Defense. 
They are an increasing, growing part of our defense budget in large 
part because we have been very, very generous with people who serve in 
the military in terms of pay, benefits, and retirement, but as everyone 
who serves on the Armed Services Committee knows, increasing personnel 
costs squeezes out other portions of the budget.
  I have talked a lot about readiness. I think that is incredibly 
important, but also procurement, making sure that the men and women who 
serve in the military have the equipment that they need to fight the 
fight. We can have a great military where everyone is very well paid, 
the benefits go on forever, but they don't have the equipment or the 
training necessary to fight.
  I will tell you, every single expert, right, left, middle, wherever, 
who studies this question, we just had four prominent think-tanks 
spanning that spectrum come out with a study on the future of the 
Department of Defense budget. Every single one of those experts has 
said that if we do nothing to rein in personnel costs, that is 
precisely the force that we will have; it will be hollow. It will not 
have the equipment, and it will not have the training to do what it is 
that we ask them to do.
  Now, we may not think that the 1 percent cut that was done here in 
the COLA is the best way to go. I can entertain that argument. I 
certainly understand veterans who were promised this, who expect to 
receive it. If it is not that, what is it? What is on the table? All we 
have done in this Chamber is said no, no, no to every effort the 
Department of Defense has put out there to try to rein in this 
spending, to try to rein in this spending, as I said, so that we can 
have a military that lives up to what we want it to live up to. This is 
a very, very real issue.
  Once again, we are punting it and completely ignoring it, completely 
unaddressed by supporters of this bill. They are just addressing this 
narrow area, making the broader problem worse.
  As I said in the beginning, also, once again, adding sequester back 
in the lexicon for another year. This is not a solution to any problem, 
other than a series of political ones. We have just too many difficult 
choices to make to simply rely on politics with every bill that we 
bring up here. We have got to make some hard choices. This bill doesn't 
do it. It punts once again in every conceivable way. It simply makes 
the problems worse.
  I know it is not going to happen, but I would nonetheless urge this 
body to oppose this bill and make some responsible choices, actually 
make choices as to what to do with the budget instead of continually 
punting on every difficult decision that comes before us. I assure you, 
this will not be the last one by any stretch of the imagination.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, it is always responsible to keep promises made to our 
Nation's veterans. What is before the House today is an extension of 
current policy that was passed in overwhelming bipartisan fashion right 
here in this Chamber less than 2 months ago.
  In addition, it does protect the promises that the Nation has made to 
our veterans. So, I encourage my colleagues to vote in favor of the 
bill, to care for those who have borne the battle, and to send that 
message to all who can hear it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, due to heavy snow in Oregon, and the 
associated cancellation of flights out of the State, I am unable to be 
present for the vote on S. 25. I plan to vote in favor of S. 25. I 
voted against the Murray-Ryan Budget that put in place the unacceptable 
cuts to military retirement cost of living adjustments (COLAs). These 
cuts would have reduced annual COLA for military retirees by 1 percent 
every year until the service member turns 62. This could be as much as 
an $83,000 cut over the lifetime of a typical enlisted member who 
retires after 20 years of service. It is unconscionable that Congress 
would try to balance the budget on the backs of our military retirees, 
and I am glad that S. 25 prevents COLA cuts from going into place for 
all current military retirees and future retirees who are currently 
serving.
  I am also pleased that S. 25 sets aside some funding for preventing 
Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) cuts to Medicare and TRICARE 
reimbursements for doctors. I voted against the creation of the faulty 
SGR formula in 1997 and have fought to fix it ever since. 
Unfortunately, instead of fixing the SGR Congress has delayed it year 
after year. This means that if Congress fails to act by March of this 
year, doctors would face a cut of approximately 27% in their Medicare 
and TRICARE reimbursements. This is not acceptable. I am hopeful that 
Congress will use the funds set aside by S. 25 to help pay for a 
permanent fix to the SGR rather than another delay.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, while I support the effort to fix 
the cut to veterans' pensions included in S. 25, I am staunchly opposed 
to extending sequestration cuts to Medicare. Given that the cut to 
veterans' pensions is due to occur many years before the sequestration 
extension, I am supporting this bill, with the hope that Congress will 
undo this additional extension of sequestration cuts to Medicare. 
Again, let me state clearly: I oppose extending sequestration cuts to 
Medicare, and I will be working to convince the Senate to find an 
alternative way to fund the fix to veterans' pensions.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick) that the House suspend 
the rules and pass the bill, S. 25, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this motion will be postponed.

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