[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14309-14310]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        THE DO-NOTHING CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, one of the great football coaches in 
American history was Vince Lombardi, from Green Bay, Wisconsin, who, 
again, was very famous for his inspiring speeches to his players and to 
his staff. And one of his most famous quotes was:

       Winners never quit and quitters never win.

  I wish, Mr. Speaker, that the Republican leadership in the House 
would go back and read Mr. Lombardi's words when they made the decision 
this past Friday to basically quit on the American people and say that 
we are going to recess this week after conclusion of business on Friday 
for the next 7 weeks.
  This is at a time when not only the eyes of the country are on this 
Chamber to get much needed critical decisions made; but, frankly, the 
eyes of the world are watching this Congress to see whether or not, 
again, financial markets will have any horizon in terms of tax policy, 
in terms of budget policy, and in terms of a whole host of basic 
fundamental issues like the farm bill, like the post office functioning 
that, when on Friday, this place clears out after Mr. Boehner's 
decision to recess, are going to be left hanging for the next 7 weeks.
  Again, this is not a problem for the House in terms of inaction by 
the Senate. The Senate passed a farm bill. They passed a bipartisan 
farm bill last June; and today we stand here with farmers who are 
getting up in the morning and going out and milking cows or picking 
crops, and they have programs which literally are expiring every 
minute. The Dairy Price Support programs expired on August 30, so dairy 
farmers up in eastern Connecticut, where I come from, whose feed costs 
are out of sight and whose fuel costs are out of sight, again, have 
absolutely no structure and no basic understanding of how they are 
going to continue to survive, because this place won't move forward on 
a farm bill with the dairy support structure, the Dairy Security Act, 
which was built in by the Senate with the bill that they passed.
  Again, the Senate has acted; the Senate passed a bill. They have a 
bill which extends crop insurance for 5 years. So for all those farmers 
out in the Midwest who have seen their corn crops literally burn up in 
a historic drought, the fact of the matter is they have absolutely no 
idea about what the future holds because this Chamber will not take up 
a farm bill and do its constitutional duty and get its work done.
  Again, the post office, which fell into not just technical but actual 
real bankruptcy a month ago because of the structure of its pension 
costs, the Senate has passed a postal reform bill which adjusts the 
finances of that system, again, with bipartisan support and will allow 
the postal service to have some confidence that its operations and its 
post offices around the country can have some modicum of a future. This 
Chamber will not take up a postal reform bill between now and this 
Friday or for the following 7 weeks.
  These are just two basic, sort of fundamental, programs which, in the 
past, Congress has done on a bipartisan basis without any of the drama 
and stress that the Speaker's decision to quit, to use Coach Lombardi's 
phraseology, is now creating. There are much larger issues, of course, 
which everyone is waiting for this Congress to act on.

[[Page 14310]]

  Sequestration: I have shipyard workers in Groton, Connecticut, who 
get up every morning to build nuclear submarines. They don't know 
whether or not on January 1, whether the chain saw set up in the 
sequestration mechanism is going to go through the defense budget.
  We have a fiscal cliff whereby middle class families don't know what 
their tax rates are going to be after January. We have physician fees 
under the Medicare program which, again, fall off a cliff on January 1.
  With all of these issues hanging out there, we still, though, have a 
Republican leadership in the House which has made the decision to go 
home on Friday for the next 7 weeks.
  Again, Coach Lombardi had it right: winners never quit and quitters 
never win. This leadership is quitting, not only on the Members that 
are prepared to roll up their sleeves and compromise and do hard work 
to get measures like the farm bill and the postal bill and budget 
policy settled once and for all. They are quitting on the American 
people. That is unacceptable leadership for the trust, the public trust 
with which they have been given.
  This morning's New York Times has a story: ``Congress Nearing the End 
of a Session Where Partisan Input Impeded Output,'' and they show the 
numbers that this is the least productive Congress in a century.
  Back when Harry Truman was President, he campaigned against the do-
nothing Congress. That Congress enacted 906 bills in the 2 years during 
which it was convened. As of this week, this Congress has enacted 173, 
a quarter of the do-nothing Congress which Harry Truman made infamous 
and famous in American history.
  We can do better as a Nation. We can get a farm bill passed. We can 
pass a postal reform bill which will keep that system alive. We can do 
budget policy. We can create a horizon for this country, which the 
American people sent us here to do, not go home and campaign.

                          ____________________