[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     LET'S TURN THE WHEEL TOGETHER

  (Mrs. MALONEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, all along the east coast, families are 
struggling to recover from superstorm Sandy. That makes avoiding the 
fiscal cliff even more important.
  Unless we come together in this body to reach across the aisle and 
compromise, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which is 
helping thousands and thousands of people and small businesses recover 
from this disaster, could be cut as much as $848 million. Cutting FEMA 
would be a manmade disaster that would cripple relief efforts in my 
home State of New York and in many other States.
  I don't believe that anyone in this body campaigned on raising the 
unemployment rate or campaigned to see the U.S. economy fall back into 
a recession, which would happen if we went over this fiscal cliff. I 
hope that no one here wants to place a significant new tax burden on 
the middle class.
  In these final days of Congress, let's reach across the aisle, let's 
reach to one another and work together on the critical problems we need 
to solve. We need to avoid the fiscal cliff.

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