[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3409-3412]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     EXTENSION OF MORNING BUSINESS

  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend 
morning business until 5:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak 
therein for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, we have now almost a 9-percent 
unemployment rate in this country. I think the good news is that 
unemployment dropped to 8.9 percent, but it is still way too high. We 
have a $1.6 trillion deficit. Yet, despite these enormous challenges, 
Congress still has not passed a Federal budget for this year. Our 
deadline to pass a 2011 appropriations bill was September 30 of last 
year, but Congress still has failed to meet that deadline. Last week, 
we passed our fifth short-term continuing resolution to keep the 
Government open.
  At some point soon, I think maybe this evening, we are going to be 
voting on the House Republicans' package of budget cuts that I believe 
threaten our economic recovery. After moving on from that, we will 
still need to pass another continuing resolution by the end of next 
week in order to avoid a Government shutdown.
  While we are debating these short-term continuing resolutions, in 
China and India and Germany, they are debating long-term investments in 
education, energy, technology, and research. Those are the decisions 
with the potential to shape the global economy for many decades to 
come. Meanwhile, here at home, we are fighting about whether we are 
going to keep the Government open for 2 weeks. This kind of short-term 
budgeting is not just hurting our future, it is hurting our economy 
today.
  Just last week, I heard from a company in New Hampshire about the 
effects of Congress's failure to pass a full-year budget. The company 
is called Nitro Security and it is located in Portsmouth, NH. It is a 
company that is at the forefront of the emerging cyber security 
industry. Even in a difficult economy over the last couple years, they 
were named one of the 600 fastest growing private companies in the 
Nation. Yet, despite most of their business coming from the private 
sector, Nitro Security also has significant contracts protecting data 
systems at the Department of Defense, NASA, and even the Food and Drug 
Administration. They should be creating jobs and helping to get our 
economy moving again, but because Congress cannot conduct its business 
on time, their stalled contracts mean they have not

[[Page 3410]]

been able to hire new workers. We are missing out on these jobs because 
Washington's budget process is broken.
  Congress needs to do better. In the last 30 years, Congress has only 
completed the annual budget process on time twice--just two times in 
the last 30 years. That is a 7-percent success rate. Solving our long-
term deficit problems and reinvigorating our economy is going to 
require tough choices, but we are never going to be able to make these 
choices until we change the way Washington does business. That is why I 
joined Senator Isakson in proposing the Biennial Budgeting and 
Appropriations Act, to bring sorely needed oversight and long-term 
planning to the Federal budget process. Our legislation would dedicate 
the first year of a Congress to appropriating Federal dollars and 
devote the second year to scrutinizing Federal programs to determine if 
they are working and deserve continued funding.
  Because of annual budgeting, Members of Congress do not have the time 
we need to conduct careful, thorough reviews of Federal programs, and 
Federal agency staff are required to dedicate countless hours every 
year to preparing the budget and to explaining what they do, rather 
than accomplishing critical missions. As a result, we continue to spend 
money on projects that are duplicative, sometimes failing, and often no 
longer useful.
  In fact, just last week, the Government Accountability Office 
released a landmark report on Government duplication and overlap. The 
report reveals that in as many as 34 different areas across the Federal 
Government, agencies are offering overlapping services to similar 
populations.
  As we think about how we need to address our debt and deficit, we 
should begin by eliminating these kinds of duplicative programs. That 
is the type of reform we should be considering. We should be 
eliminating duplication and making targeted cuts and investments in our 
future. We should be making investments in projects such as the 
Memorial Bridge, which connects New Hampshire and Maine and is a 
critical economic engine for the seacoast region of New Hampshire and 
Maine and the shipyard that is so vital to making sure we can upgrade 
the ships in our Navy.
  Even though this bridge has been recognized as a national priority 
and it enjoys support from the Maine and New Hampshire Senate 
delegations, the project to replace the bridge has been threatened by 
ill-considered, reckless cuts in the House of Representatives' 
continuing resolution. These are the consequences of short-term 
budgetary thinking: They are penny wise and pound foolish.
  In another example we have in New Hampshire, the Bureau of Prisons 
has recently completed construction of a Federal prison in the north 
country of New Hampshire in a community called Berlin. The cost--$276 
million. As the construction was wrapping up, the Bureau of Prisons 
requested activation funding for fiscal year 2011 to hire rank-and-file 
officers and begin getting this prison ready to open. But because we 
are operating on this short-term continuing resolution that fails to 
account for these types of situations, we now have a state-of-the-art, 
$276 million prison that is sitting vacant. We have a warden who is 
there who is waiting to hire staff. The Bureau of Prisons needs the 
1,280 inmate beds this facility will provide. The community needs the 
$40 million annual economic impact from this prison and the 340 jobs 
this facility will provide. But none of these important objectives are 
being met because our budget process is not working. Instead, the 
Bureau of Prisons is spending $4 million a year to maintain an empty 
building.
  As Members of Congress, we are entrusted with the responsibilities of 
spending taxpayer dollars wisely. Our current budget and spending 
process makes it all too easy for waste and inefficiency to remain 
hidden and, at the same time, important priorities are neglected by the 
whims of a chaotic annual budgeting process. Switching to biennial 
budgeting will not solve all our problems, but it would certainly be an 
important step toward greater oversight, increased accountability, and 
a more responsible government.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first, I thank my colleague from New 
Hampshire for her great leadership on the subject about which she just 
spoke; that is, the necessity of moving beyond our old system of having 
appropriations bills every year. I have advocated, for a long time, 
exactly what she is taking the lead on; that is, every 2 years do the 
appropriations and then we can do oversight. As the Senator from New 
Hampshire correctly pointed out, we don't do oversight because we are 
always wrapped up in some appropriations measure or budget measure 
every single year.
  It is time we move and move as rapidly as possible to biennial 
budgeting so we can fulfill one of our most important obligations, 
which is to find out what is working and what is not working so we can 
have oversight. I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for her 
leadership in this area.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. I thank Senator Harkin for his efforts over the years 
to try to move us to a biennial budget and a process that gets a budget 
done that makes a lot more sense and allows us to be a lot more 
thoughtful about how we are supporting programs in our Federal 
Government.
  Mr. HARKIN. Just make sure I am on your bill, OK?
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. We will.
  Mr. HARKIN. Put my name in because you are right on--and Senator 
Isakson. It is a bipartisan effort and it should be a bipartisan 
effort. I talked to a number of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle who believe the same way we do about this. Hopefully, we can have 
a good, bipartisan approach.
  I wish to take a few moments to talk about the budget and what we are 
confronting right now in the Congress. First of all, we all agree--I 
think we should all agree--the deficits we have now are unsustainable. 
They are a drag on our economy, they jeopardize our future, and they 
have to be brought under control. I am committed to finding a 
bipartisan approach to try to get us through this and to attain this 
important goal of bringing the budget under control and balanced for 
the future.
  I might just say for the last three decades, I have been proud that 
my party, the Democratic Party, has been the party of fiscal discipline 
and balanced budgets. Well, that may come as a shock to some people, 
but let's review the history.
  When Bill Clinton became President in 1992, he inherited at that time 
the largest deficits in U.S. history. Well, he joined with Democrats in 
Congress to pass a balanced deficit reduction law that resulted in the 
largest surpluses in history and put us on a path, by the year 2000, to 
completely eliminate the national debt within a decade. I was here for 
that. Every single Republican voted against it, every single one.
  Likewise, President Obama inherited from President Bush a deficit in 
excess of--are you ready for this one--$1 trillion and a deep recession 
that made it even worse. Once again, we Democrats are committed to 
bringing this under control and to do it in a fair and balanced way.
  But as a former President once said: Here we go again. In December, 
my friends on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, insisted 
that we extend tax cuts largely benefitting the wealthy, add $354 
billion to the deficit this year, and even more next year. Then they 
voted to repeal the health reform law on the House side, which would 
add $210 billion to the deficit over the next decade. Now these same 
people are shedding crocodile tears and claiming to be worried about 
the deficit.
  Let's be clear. There is a right way to balance the budget and there 
is a wrong way. We can balance the budget in a way that is fair or we 
can do it in a way that is manifestly not fair, that will deepen the 
gulf between the rich and the poor and further erode the middle class 
in our country.

[[Page 3411]]

  H.R. 1, which I assume we will be voting on shortly, embodies the 
Republican approach to reducing deficits, driven by ideology that 
absolutely rules out any tax increase. It kind of holds the Bush tax 
cuts to the wealthy to be almost sacred. Instead, they take a meat ax 
to the essential parts of the budget, everything from cancer research 
to education to safety net programs for our most vulnerable citizens.
  Well, we have seen this movie before--you know, give tax breaks to 
corporations and the wealthiest people in our society. Then balance the 
budget on the backs of the middle class and low-income in America. 
These are bad priorities, they are bad policies, and they are bad 
values.
  The right way is a balanced approach. This must include spending 
cuts. We have made cuts in my own appropriations bill. But it also 
includes necessary revenue increases while making room for critical 
investments in education, job training, infrastructure, research, 
things that are essential to economic expansion and job creation in the 
future.
  We know this balanced budget approach can work. As I said, that is 
what we did in the early 1990s under President Clinton. We did both. We 
cut spending and we raised revenues. As I said, every Republican voted 
against it. But that single act of Congress, that bill signed by the 
President, led to the largest budget surplus and the longest economic 
expansion in U.S. history and created 22 million new jobs.
  Now, H.R. 1, which has come over from the House, their approach on 
how to bring the budget under control, will kill jobs. Mark Zandi, top 
economic adviser to Senator McCain's campaign in 2008, estimates H.R. 1 
will kill some 700,000 jobs. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke 
estimates it will kill 200,000 jobs. Nobody knows for sure. But what 
they all agree on is it will kill jobs. With about 9 percent 
unemployment, a fragile economy--we are just now starting to increase 
employment in this country--why would we be asked to vote for a bill 
that we know, that everyone agrees, will kill hundreds of thousands of 
jobs?
  Well, we do not reduce the deficit by increasing unemployment. That 
is what H.R. 1 will do. It will slow economic growth, drag us back into 
a recession, and make deficits even worse. H.R. 1 slashes the entire 
gamut of education programs that are so essential to provide a ladder 
of opportunity for our younger generation in this country. It slashes 
the safety net for our most vulnerable citizens--infants, children, 
seniors, and people with disabilities. So if you vote for H.R. 1, the 
House bill, you are voting to slash title I grants to school districts 
by nearly $700 million. It means that 2,400 schools serving 1 million 
disadvantaged students could lose funding.
  If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash community health 
centers by about $1 billion. That means you eliminate funding for 127 
clinics in 38 States. If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash 
Head Start Programs. Why would you want to take it out on kids? Why 
would you want to say: Oh, we have to balance the budget so we are 
going after Head Start kids? But that is what it does. It eliminates 
services for about 218,000 children and their families next year, about 
a 25-percent reduction in Head Start.
  If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash childcare. The child 
care development block grant would be cut by H.R. 1. If you vote for 
H.R. 1, you are voting to undermine Social Security.
  Well, people say: How is that? Social Security is not involved in 
H.R. 1. Well, it is in this way: We know because of the recession more 
and more people have applied for SSI, supplemental security income. 
They have applied for disability. They have gone on disability or 
basically they have just retired.
  Well, in order to take care of this huge increase in the number of 
people applying, we have to have people who will take the cases in, 
review them, make sure people are eligible, cut the checks, and get the 
money out. That is called the Social Security Administration. Well, 
H.R. 1 cuts the funding for doing this $125 million below last year's 
funding level. That means every American filing for benefits this year 
will have to wait even longer. Right now, it is almost 400-and-some 
days. That is over a year. That is over a year.
  Think about if you are on disability, if you are disabled and you 
cannot work and you filed for a disability claim. You are waiting a 
year and a half in order to even get your first check. Well, H.R. 1 
would cut it even more and would probably increase waiting times up to 
2 years or maybe even more than 2 years. So it undermines the safety 
net of Social Security.
  If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash student aid. It cuts 
the maximum Pell grant by $845. That is 15 percent below where we are 
now. You might say: Well, that is not that big a deal. Well, it is. I 
tell Senators, check two things. Check with your private not-for-profit 
schools in your States. They do a great job of educating low-income 
students because they are able to utilize Pell grants plus endowments. 
They put them together. They do a great job in every one of our States 
educating poor kids. Start taking away that Pell grant, we lower that 
Pell grant, that means a lot of poor kids will not be able to go to 
school. That means the private non-profits would have to raise the 
tuition on other kids. That means some of them would not be able to go, 
and we start an escalator effect in our colleges.
  I just had the President of the University of Iowa, President Mason, 
in to see me today talking about one of our great universities in Iowa, 
the University of Iowa. She told me, President Mason said that cutting 
Pell grants would affect probably close to 5,000 students at the 
University of Iowa. Sometimes this is the difference between whether 
they are in school or they are not in school or it could be the 
difference between a Pell grant or they have to go out and borrow more 
money and take on more debt.
  So if you vote for H.R. 1, you are cutting student aid. If you vote 
for H.R. 1, you are going to slash job training programs. The House 
bill that came over, H.R. 1, completely eliminates Federal funding for 
adult training, dislocated worker assistance and youth training 
programs, completely eliminates it. These programs provide job training 
and reemployment services to about 8 million Americans every year, 8 
million. They just do away with it.
  If you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to slash the community 
services block grant. Well, they cut about $305 million from that. That 
provides services to some of our lowest income people and elderly. If 
you vote for H.R. 1, you are voting to cut investments in 
infrastructure, highway funding, sewer and drinking water funds, and 
rural economic development funding because H.R. 1 slashes community 
development block grants by 62 percent.
  Now, I say go out and talk to your mayors, talk to your city council, 
talk to your boards of supervisors in your counties. Ask them if they 
can take a 62-percent cut in their community development block grants 
and what it is going to mean to them.
  Well, I cannot help but also speak to my own constituents in Iowa 
about what this means for my own State. If H.R. 1, the House bill which 
passed the House, if it were to be passed and enacted into law--well, I 
mentioned about the cuts that we are having in the Job Corps. It would 
basically kill the Denison, IA, Job Corps Center, which employs 163 
people. It provides training to 450 at-risk students each year, and we 
have a new Job Corps Center just being built, just being opened in 
Ottumwa. That will probably just come to a screeching halt. It is 
supposed to be opening later this year.
  It would shut down at least the community health center in 
Centerville, IA. That is H.R. 1. H.R. 1 would be cutting down the 
community services block grant and would shut down the Red Rock 
Community Action Agency serving Boone, Jasper, Warren, Marion, and 
rural Polk County.
  H.R. 1, as I mentioned, would completely eliminate funding for job 
training programs, which assisted more than 35,000 Iowans in the last 
year. As I mentioned, it would slash Pell grants

[[Page 3412]]

for our kids who go to all of our colleges in Iowa, the private not-
for-profits and our Regents institutions. Two thousand low-income Iowa 
kids who now attend Head Start would be cut off.
  Lastly, it is not only just the cuts and the slashes to these vital 
programs which will increase unemployment and send us back into another 
recession, there are riders in this bill, what we call legislative 
riders, that are pernicious. They do terrible damage to our country.
  For example--just one--there is a rider in the bill that says no 
money can be used or spent to continue the implementation of the health 
reform bill that we passed last year. Well, what does that mean? Well, 
that means right now, in law, because of the Affordable Care Act we 
passed last year, kids can stay on their parents' policy until they are 
age 26. That would be gone. The question would be, the ones who got on 
before this, will they be able to stay on? But I can tell you, no new 
kids would ever be allowed to stay on their parents' policy until they 
are age 26.
  We put in--and as you know, it is in law right now--that an insurance 
company cannot impose a lifetime limit on individuals. That was in the 
bill last year. That would be gone. They can start reinstituting 
lifetime limits and annual limits.
  Also we had a provision in the bill that provided for a medical loss 
provision. Let me try to explain that.
  In our bill we said insurers and health insurance companies have to 
pay at least 80 cents of every dollar of premium they collect on health 
care rather than profits, bonuses, overhead, fancy buildings, and 
corporate jets and all of that. They had to pay--80 cents of every 
premium dollar has to go for health care. It is done away with under 
H.R. 1. We cannot enforce that at all.
  So, again, for those who have seen benefits to themselves from the 
health care bill we passed, whether it is keeping their kids on their 
policy or elderly people now who get free mammograms and free 
colonoscopies and a free health checkup every year with no copays, no 
deductibles, that ends. That ends with H.R. 1.
  So the bill passed by the House is just, as I said, bad policy, and 
it is bad values. It is not the values of our country, and I hope the 
Senate will resoundingly--resoundingly--defeat H.R. 1, consign it to 
the scrap heap of history, the history of ill-advised ideas, of ill-
advised programs. There have been a lot of them that have come along in 
the history of this country.
  Fortunately, I think the Congress in most instances has turned them 
down, and we moved ahead. We can't afford to go backward. H.R. 1 would 
do that. It would take this country back. We would lose jobs. It would 
cut kids out of getting an education, close down Head Start centers. It 
would widen that gulf between the rich and the poor. We can't continue 
to go down that road. We don't want to wind up another Third World 
country where we have a few at the top and everybody at the bottom and 
nobody in between. The middle class built this country, and we cannot 
continue to erode the middle class. That is what H.R. 1 would do, erode 
the middle class and widen the gulf between the rich and poor.
  I hope the Senate will recognize H.R. 1 for what it is, a detriment, 
a body blow to our recovery efforts. I hope the Senate will 
resoundingly defeat it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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