[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3448-3451]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE FEDERAL DEFICIT

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, as someone who voted to freeze salaries, 
to end earmarks in this budget process, as someone who has already 
voted to cut $45 billion from the budget, I rise today in recognition 
that business as usual cannot continue. I recognize the critical 
importance of addressing our Federal deficit--a deficit, I would add, 
inherited by this administration, a deficit driven by two wars, both 
unpaid for, and the unprecedented need for governmental action to 
mitigate the wild excesses of Wall Street and American financial 
markets, excesses that were effectively condoned by the last 
administration, whose policies took this Nation to the brink of a 
second Great Depression and cost millions of American jobs.
  I never forget that time in late 2008 when Chairman Bernanke, the 
Chairman of the Federal Reserve, came before members of the Banking 
Committee and members of the leadership and described the circumstances 
that were unfolding in the country in which a series of financial 
institutions, according to Chairman Bernanke and then-Secretary 
Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury--they said: We are going to have 
a series of financial institutions collapse, and if they collapse, they 
will create systemic risk to the entire country's economy, and every 
American will feel the consequences of that collapse. I remember how 
hushed that room was.
  I remember also the question being put to Chairman Bernanke: Surely 
you must have enough tools at the Federal Reserve to get us through 
this period of time. I remember the response to that question, which 
was basically: Senator, if you and your colleagues do not act in a 
matter of days, maybe a week, we will have a global financial meltdown, 
which really meant a new depression.
  Chairman Bernanke is an academician. His expertise is in depression-
era economics, how this Nation got into the last depression, how 
Roosevelt got us out of it. So when he made that statement, it was all 
the more chilling. It is from that moment in 2008, before this 
President took office and Democrats were in full control here, that, in 
fact, we were facing the challenges we are today.
  Those of us who believe in a free market also know you cannot have a 
free-for-all market. We had economic policies for the Bush 8 years, two 
wars raging abroad, an unregulated market that allowed for the free-
for-all that brought us on the brink of a new depression, and that is 
what we are meeting the challenges of today.
  Those choices then and the choices we make, what we choose to cut and 
what we determine is in our interest, will speak volumes about our 
values, our priorities as a people and as a Nation.
  Mr. President, I favor smart cuts, not dangerous ones. In an 
independent analysis of H.R. 1, which we are going to be voting on 
tomorrow--the Republican vision of where we should take the country--
shows we are losing about 700,000 jobs. But we are trying to grow jobs 
in America. We have finally gotten into positive gross domestic product 
of our Nation's economy. We are seeing job growth. I would like to see 
it be even more robust, but H.R. 1 takes us back the opposite way and 
threatens the very essence of this economic recovery--700,000 jobs.
  Don't believe what I say because I say it is so, but because those in 
the know say it--Ben Bernanke: ``The GOP's plan will cut jobs.'' 
Economist Mark Zandi: ``The GOP plan would cost 700,000 jobs.'' Here is 
another analysis: House spending cuts will hurt economic growth. So 
what we have is economist after economist telling us that H.R. 1 is a 
recipe for disaster when it comes to the question of jobs in America.
  That analysis which says we would slash 700,000 jobs directly impacts 
the lives of middle-class and working families struggling to get back 
on their feet. They are severe cuts that run roughshod over the green 
shoots of economic recovery just to satisfy a political agenda. I favor 
smart commonsense cuts--cuts made with a surgeon's knife not a meat ax; 
cuts that are thoughtful, surgically precise cuts that actually reduce 
the deficit, not cuts that eliminate jobs and disinvest in educational 
opportunities for millions of promising young Americans, not cuts that 
hurt middle-class families struggling to make ends meet, make our 
workforce less competitive, our communities less safe, and strip away 
basic protections Americans have come to take for granted.
  In my view, we can preserve our values and invest in the future, 
invest in out-educating, out-innovating, out-greening, and out-growing 
the world and still cut the deficit. To begin with, Secretary Gates of 
the Department of Defense has identified $78 billion in defense 
spending cuts alone. He has identified $178 billion in program 
reductions over 5 years, including delaying or terminating high-profile 
weapon systems.
  I agree with Secretary Gates that we can live without the Marine 
Corps variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as well as the Marine 
Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. The Secretary has identified $54 
billion in cuts in overhead costs and improved efficiency across 
defense agencies and the civilian bureaucracy by reducing the number of 
defense contractors and wholly redundant intelligence organizations, 
among other improvements. Again, these are smart decisions that do not 
burden military families or affect our defensive capabilities.

[[Page 3449]]

  I would add to that list of smart defense cuts the elimination of 
$1.75 billion for the F-22 aircraft and $439 million for an alternative 
engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, a cut for which I 
voted. These, among others, are smart cuts. But I think it is a mistake 
to pursue a budget-cutting strategy that costs this Nation 700,000 jobs 
through 2012, as the Republican plan will do--20,000 of those jobs from 
my home State of New Jersey, including more than 3,000 community health 
center jobs and 3,400 transportation and infrastructure jobs.
  Another smart cut would be to do away with corporate subsidies that 
do nothing but pad the profits of companies that do not need them to be 
profitable and grow. We can repeal, for example, oil subsidies, as I 
have proposed, that would save $33 billion over 10 years on a windfall 
giveaway program to big oil that hardly needs a government handout. 
Over the past decade, BP, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and Conoco have had 
combined profits of just under $1 trillion. Yet we have a system that 
provides them billions in subsidies every year. That is simply 
outrageous.
  Even traditional oil industry supporters, such as former President 
George W. Bush and Shell's former CEO, have admitted when oil prices 
are this high oil companies do not need subsidies. They have the 
economic incentive they need to explore and drill. In 2010 alone, last 
year, they made over $75 billion, and that includes the $41 billion BP 
has spent trying to clean up the spill in the gulf--cleaning up the 
environment and paying for the economic damage they caused.
  The fact is, cutting unnecessary defense programs and cutting oil 
subsidies are among the smart cuts that will save money while doing no 
harm to middle-class families. But the Republican plan, on the other 
hand, will take money away from the one thing that will allow millions 
of young people to reach their goals and prepare them to help America 
meet its competitive future; namely, a good education. That is a 
terrible mistake.
  It is a mistake to cut the average New Jersey undergraduate's Pell 
grant by more than $845, an 11-percent cut. It is a mistake to take 
$115 million in Pell grants from 183,000 promising students in my 
State, as the Republican cuts would do. It is a mistake to cut funding 
to 18,000 students in Union County, NJ, or 16,500 in Middlesex County 
and 15,500 in Essex County, and to continue to cut Pell grants by $56 
billion over the next 10 years. It is simply a mistake not to invest in 
education.
  We are globally challenged for human capital in the delivery of a 
service or the production of a product. The boundaries of mankind have 
largely been erased in pursuit of that human capital so that an 
engineer's report is done in India and sent back to the United States 
for a fraction of its cost, a radiologist's report is done in Northern 
Ireland and read to your local hospital by your doctor, or if you have 
a problem with your credit card--as I recently did because there was a 
charge that wasn't mine--you end up with a call center in South Africa.
  In the pursuit of human capital for the delivery of a service or a 
product we are globally challenged, which means for the Nation to 
continue to be a global economic leader it needs to be, at the apex of 
the curve of intellect, the most highly educated generation of 
Americans the Nation has ever had. That is how we will grow this 
economy and prosper and compete in the world. Yet the Republican budget 
moves us exactly the opposite way.
  It is wrong to leave 4,000 New Jersey children without access to Head 
Start while at the same time continuing tax cuts for millionaires and 
multimillionaires. It is shortsighted to cut job training.
  I went to a job training site in one of our counties. The place was 
packed--packed with individuals who have worked in the past but are 
unemployed now and looking to get the additional training that will 
make them competitive in a tough job market. So instead of helping our 
fellow Americans be as competitive as they can be for the job 
opportunities that may exist, we are going to cut job training for 
70,000 New Jerseyans rather than seriously look at cutting farm 
subsidies. We need to be smarter about the cuts we make.
  I think we would all agree that there are certain farm subsidies that 
are no longer needed, and we could certainly make smart cuts in some of 
those programs. We are all well aware that farm subsidies are not about 
the small American farm. I want to nurture that small American farm, 
including back home in New Jersey. We call New Jersey the Garden State. 
We are proud we are No. 2 in blueberries, No. 4 in asparagus. If you 
had cranberry for Thanksgiving last year, it probably came from the 
pine barrens of New Jersey with cranberry bogs. But that small farmer 
is not who we are talking about. This is about systematic efforts to 
move land from small farms to large corporate farms that mass-produce 
commodity crops such as cotton.
  We pay out billions in agricultural subsidies every year that have 
created problems such as the ones we saw in Brazil earlier this year. 
Brazil went to the World Trade Organization and complained that what we 
were doing was an unfair trade practice, and the World Trade 
Organization agreed. So to avoid retaliatory tariffs--in essence, taxes 
against our products by Brazil--the United States agreed to pay $147 
million in assistance to Brazilian producers. Yes, you heard me right--
$147 million that American taxpayers are now paying to subsidize not 
American farmers but, because of our unfair trade practice, we are now 
subsidizing Brazilian farmers with our tax dollars. Something is wrong 
about that process.
  We need to put an end to such ridiculous policies and save taxpayers 
billions of dollars. But instead of saving billions in smart cuts like 
that, the Republican plan under H.R. 1 goes after homeland security 
funding. That bill will cut homeland security investments by $3 million 
in my home State of New Jersey alone--home, according to the FBI, of 
the two most dangerous miles in America because of the chemical 
causeway along the Hudson waterfront that creates a real challenge--
directly affecting the budgets of first responders such as the 
courageous men and women who responded on September 11. It is dangerous 
to cut more than $22 million in port security grants and more than $16 
million in transit security grants from the Port Authority of New York 
and New Jersey.
  I have worked hard, from implementing the 9/11 recommendations to 
fighting for port cargo screening. We don't need a nuclear or 
biological weapon coming into our ports or a threat like we saw from 
the terrorists in Mumbai in our transit systems that would result in a 
devastating attack and then further threaten our economy. Yet that is 
exactly what the Republican budget does.
  I believe it is dangerous to cut $4.5 million in transit security 
grants for northern New Jersey, more than $3.5 million from the 
Philadelphia area and southern New Jersey, leaving families in my State 
and throughout that corridor who travel between States less safe.
  I have a different take than my Republican colleagues on how we 
achieve deficit reduction. Quite simply, it comes down to one truism 
that we should keep in mind during this budget process, and that is 
this: You show me your budget, and I will show you your values.
  We have that in our own family budgets. Families struggle together to 
have a place to call home for their families, to educate their 
children, to put food on the table, to be able to realize their hopes 
and dreams and aspirations. And how we spend our money as families 
speaks to our values, and, of course, the work we do to earn that 
money. That is true about the Nation's budget. The Nation's budget is a 
reflection of our collective values as a country. Those values are 
clearly evident in what we choose to fund and what we choose to cut.
  I would remind my colleagues this debate is about more than numbers 
on a page. It is a portrait of America, a reflection of who we are and 
what we want this Nation to be. To make cuts simply to reach a 
numerical goal that

[[Page 3450]]

isn't established by any sound science is to say that we care more 
about the bottom line than about investing in people, investing in 
jobs, in education, in infrastructure, in building and growing this 
economy, and protecting a safe, clean way of life that we have too 
often come to take for granted.
  I want to talk about that for a moment.
  From the moment we get up in the morning, to the moment we go to bed 
at night, the Republican plan would make cuts that affect the daily 
lives of millions of Americans and millions of jobs in every economic 
sector.
  In America, when you turn on the tap for a glass of water or take 
your child fishing at a local lake, someone is at work--someone with a 
family--who is making sure the water is safe to drink and the lake is 
not polluted.
  But the Republican plan cuts $700 million from the Clean Water State 
Revolving Fund and $250 million from the Drinking Water State Revolving 
Fund that have helped municipalities and communities put people to work 
on water quality protection projects.
  The Republican plan cuts almost $1 billion from clean water and that 
means cutting not just funding, but jobs of those whose work is to keep 
our water safe and clean.
  Is that a smart cut? Does that reflect who we are and what we want 
this Nation to be?
  If you live on a river, a flood plain, or on the coast and a storm 
strikes, you know that in America there will be someone there to help 
if there is a flood or a coastal emergency.
  The Republican plan, even after the disastrous experience in the wake 
of Katrina, cuts $30 million from flood control and coastal 
emergencies. Is that what we learned from New Orleans? Is that what we, 
as a nation, believe is a smart cut?
  If you wake up in the middle of the night and your child is sick and 
you don't know why, or you think that child may have accidently 
ingested something poisonous, or your child is diagnosed with a life-
threatening disease, in America you can call the Poison Control Center, 
take your child to a community health center, know that the Centers for 
Disease Control is doing its job.
  In America you know that the National Institutes of Health is working 
every day to find the next treatment or cure that affects our families, 
friends, and neighbors, $300 million of that in New Jersey, bringing 
thousands of new 21st century jobs to my State to help continue our 
economic recovery.
  But the Republican plan cuts $755 million from the CDC; $1 billion 
from the National Institutes of Health; $27 million from Poison Control 
Centers; $1.3 billion from community health centers and 3,400 community 
health center jobs in my State of New Jersey--3,400 more unemployed New 
Jerseyans.
  We may not immediately make the connection between what these cuts 
mean and our lives, but they have consequences to our lives, to our 
families, to our prosperity. It also means some people will lose their 
jobs.
  This morning millions of Americans got up and scrambled a few eggs 
and made some bacon for breakfast.
  Fortunately, in this country we know it was someone's job to inspect 
those eggs. It was someone's job to inspect that bacon and make sure it 
was safe to eat. The Republican plan cuts $53 million from Food Safety 
and Inspection Service, the loss of more safety inspectors at a time 
when we have heard numerous reports of tainted food and the need for 
more, not fewer, food inspectors keeping our food supply safe.
  Is that reflective of our values? Is that what we think of as life in 
America?
  If you were a middle-class New Jerseyan who, after a year of looking 
for a job, finally had an interview and wanted to take the train 
because you thought it would be a faster, easier, and more convenient 
way to get to that interview, you may find there are not as many 
opportunities because the Republican budget cuts $224 million from 
Amtrak. In a post-September 11 world in which multiple modes of 
transportation are critical to our security, for so we learned on 
September 11 that when there are no trans-Hudson crossings through the 
tunnels or through PATH, which is the rail connection between New York 
and New Jersey, we had ferries that took people out of Lower Manhattan 
and to New Jersey hospitals. Multiple modes of transportation is not 
only about economic opportunity, it is about security in the post-
September 11 world. Yet the budget cuts $224 million from Amtrak, which 
is how we send our businesspeople to sell their products between 
cities, go to great research universities and to hospitals to be cured. 
You would be forced to take the car, buy the gas, burn the fuel, fight 
the traffic, and park in the city to get to your interview. Is that how 
we invest in our infrastructure? Is that the type of smart growth that 
will help us achieve a greener, cleaner future?
  When you park the car and walk to your interview you expect to have 
enough police on the street to protect you from gangs and criminals.
  Well, this Republican plan cuts the National Drug Intelligence Center 
by $11 million; law enforcement wireless communications by $52 million; 
the U.S. Marshals Service by $10 million; the FBI that deals with 
domestic terrorism by $74 million; State and local law enforcement 
assistance by $256 million; juvenile justice by $2.3 million; and the 
COPS Program that puts police on the street and provides them with 
state-of-the-art equipment they need by $600 million; $600 million from 
the COPS Program means fewer cops on the beat.
  Are those the kind of cuts that we want.
  Are those the kind of cuts that will keep our communities safe? Are 
they smart cuts that reflect our values in a post 9-11 world?
  Let me also mention one thing that is not specifically a cut in the 
Republican plan, but something it does that runs contrary to our belief 
as a nation that the air we breathe should be clean and safe.
  The legislation presented by the Republicans eliminates many 
environmental protections with cuts to the EPA's budget, but it is also 
loaded with policy riders designed specifically to gut the Clean Air 
Act.
  I believe that is wrong. I believe it runs contrary to American 
values, and I consider any attack on the Clean Air Act to be an attack 
on New Jersey.
  Because of the emissions of dirty, old out of state coal plants, 
every county in my State is deemed to be out of compliance with the 
Clean Air Act. One of these coal powerplants is the Portland Generation 
Station just across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. It emitted 
30,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2009--almost three times the amount of 
all seven of New Jersey's coal plants combined.
  This sulfur dioxide wafts into Warren, Sussex, Hunterdon and Morris 
counties and acts to cause and exacerbate a whole host of respiratory 
illnesses from asthma to heart disease.
  We simply cannot gut the one piece of legislation that protects the 
very air we breathe and makes it safe for our children to go out and 
play without fear of being sick. This Republican plan that guts the 
Clean Air Act does not reflect our values as a Nation. It is simply not 
reflective of who we are, what we want this Nation to be, or what we 
want for our children's future.
  The list of H.R. 1's short-sighted dis-investments in this Nation's 
future goes on and on. ``Show me your budget and I'll show you your 
values.''
  The Republican proposal before us is, in my view, an affront to 
American values, not a reflection of them.
  I for one do not believe for one second that it reflects who we are 
and what we want this Nation to be. I do believe that at a time that we 
are finally growing this economy, these indiscriminate cuts, as many 
economists have said, will throw this economy right back to the deep 
recession we are coming out of. That means fewer jobs here in America. 
That certainly cannot be part of our values. That is why I will be 
voting against H.R. 1, to protect American values and protect American 
jobs.
  I yield the floor.

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