[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15590-15596]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF SEQUESTRATION CUTS TO MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH 
                         PROGRAMS AND RESEARCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for yielding to me for a very 
important hour.
  I want to begin with Elodie Michaud, this beautiful, beautiful baby 
and hope that everyone will think about Elodie as every child, as any 
child, as your child. Because what I rise to talk about today is the 
importance of protecting very important maternal and child health 
programs and research, some wonderful things that our country does

[[Page 15591]]

to make sure that children like Elodie, regardless of their 
circumstances and where they live and how much money their parents 
make, will be able to grow up healthy and happy and productive in our 
country.

                              {time}  1430

  Investments in maternal and child health improve the well-being and 
quality of life for women and children and families all over the 
country while actually reducing government costs. So as we deal with 
all of the issues of the debt and the deficit, I want to make sure that 
everybody is keeping Elodie, and children like her and her mother and 
her father and her family, in mind and making cuts that really make 
sense and avoiding cuts that absolutely make no sense, that don't save 
money, and certainly don't make our country any better. The investments 
that we make help children remain healthy, achieve success in school, 
and become productive members of society.
  While we all agree that we want to tackle our fiscal challenges, we 
want to make sure that we take the kind of balanced and sensible 
approach that reduces our deficit, puts our fiscal house in order, and 
protects the health of women, children, and families. So we should all 
agree, both sides of the aisle, that we want to increase revenue to 
tackle our budget deficits and ask those who can afford it--the 
wealthier individuals and profitable corporations--to pay their fair 
share so that we don't ask children and families, like Elodie's family, 
to bear the burden.
  Elodie certainly had nothing to do with creating the deficit, and 
many families that the Elodies of the world live in had nothing do with 
creating the deficit. Asking them to pay more doesn't make any sense. 
We need to find more savings in the bloated defense budget and waste, 
fraud, and abuse throughout many different systems. Obviously, we want 
to get rid of unnecessary and duplicative programs that we don't need, 
and we should go very carefully through our budget. We don't want to do 
it at the expense of children.
  When we talk about sequestration, these are automatic budget cuts 
that will go through if we don't resolve the fiscal problems that we 
have right now. These are, I would argue, inefficient, across-the-board 
cuts that will be made. And even though some programs for vulnerable 
Americans are protected, others would be severely cut. We should not 
allow this.
  American families shouldn't be paying for a budget deficit largely 
caused by things like two unpaid-for wars and two unpaid-for tax cuts 
that disproportionately benefited the wealthy and Wall Street gone 
wild, which led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. Our 
budget should not be balanced on the backs of vulnerable Americans, 
including women and children. Funding programs that assist vulnerable 
women and children have already experienced serious cuts in recent 
years, and we shouldn't be asking more from these safety net programs.
  We also want to ensure that we don't replace sequestration, these 
automatic cuts that will go into place, with something even worse. Some 
alternatives are being considered that would actually do even more harm 
than sequestration to women and children. Although Medicare 
beneficiaries are protected under sequestration, some proposals would 
make cuts and/or change Medicaid into a block grant. That means giving 
just a sum of money to the States pretty much to do what they want with 
and not necessarily covering the children and poor people, poor 
families that need Medicaid support.
  In the United States of America, Medicaid covers more than 40 percent 
of all births and covers one in three children. Think about that. Forty 
percent of all births and one in three children are in families that 
qualify for Medicaid support. That means that they're low income enough 
to be able to qualify for Medicaid, and we certainly don't want to do 
something that would make that unavailable and so we can continue to 
have the birth of healthy children.
  Sequestration would devastate our public health system, impeding our 
ability to bend the health care cost curve, to prevent illness, to cure 
diseases, to ensure access to quality health services, and to ensure 
the healthy development of our children.
  Sequestration will eliminate nearly $1 billion in Federal funding for 
programs and research designed to promote and protect the health of 
women and children. These cuts will hinder our ability to extend 
quality health care services to women and to families.
  I want to talk about a very important and often under attack program 
that we call title X, and that is family planning services, family 
planning clinics. I also want to talk about the title V maternal and 
child health services block grants, two programs that reduce barriers 
for low-income women and children to access critical health care 
services and support. If we go to these automatic cuts, again called 
sequestration, we will be cutting $24 million in funding to title X 
clinics, decreasing Federal funding for the only dedicated family 
planning program to its lowest point in a decade. Title X clinics are 
critical and vital components of our health care safety net, providing 
critical access to breast and cervical cancer screening programs, 
prevention and treatment services for sexually transmitted diseases, 
and reducing the rate of unintended pregnancies, and reducing the rate 
of abortions. Access to family planning means that there will be less 
abortions in the United States.
  For many women, title X clinics provide the only health care services 
that they ever receive in their lives. Without access, some women will 
have a harder time obtaining preventive care and treatment services. 
I'm talking about clinics that provide for up to 5 million women across 
the country. People like to think about Planned Parenthood as being the 
place where women can get abortions. That's a tiny part of their 
services, about 3 percent. Mostly they provide primary health care, 
including access to contraception. That's a very important service that 
we want to make sure that we don't cut.
  The breast and cervical cancer screening program has been 
particularly important to providing access for women to early detection 
and screening services. In my State of Illinois--I'm from the Chicago 
area--title X clinics have caught 1,400 cases of cervical cancer and 
713 cases of breast cancer over a 5-year period through the program. 
Sequestration cuts mean that 550 fewer Illinois women will be screened 
for cancer through this program, potentially costing women's lives 
because their cancer will be found too late without access to these 
lifesaving services.
  I have been joined by one of the chief advocates for women in the 
United States of America who has been such an incredible and consistent 
advocate. I am so proud and grateful that Carolyn Maloney from New York 
has joined us. I would like to yield to the gentlewoman.

                              {time}  1440

  Mrs. MALONEY. I would like to congratulate my good friend and 
colleague Jan Schakowsky for her incredible leadership in this body and 
for organizing this Special Order that focuses on the impact of 
sequestration on women, children, and families. It's very important.
  Just yesterday, Jan, there was a report that came out from the 
National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers which 
said that if we go over this fiscal cliff--if we do sequestration--that 
it would cut consumer spending by $200 billion. So, by having a 
consensus on the budget and a financial plan that is fair and balanced 
going forward, it could be $200 billion in stimulus. On top of that 
stimulus, there would be business and market stimulus just by having 
some certainty in where we're going. Having an agreement that is fair 
and balanced is critical for the overall economy, but the impact on 
women and children and on some of our most vulnerable would be 
devastating. That's why your particular focus today in this Special 
Order is so important.
  The United States currently ranks about 50th in the world in infant 
mortality. In Morocco, 1.8 infants under 1

[[Page 15592]]

year of age die for every 1,000 live births each year. In Japan, the 
number is 2.2. In the United States, to our shame, the number is six. 
From New Zealand to all other advanced countries around the world, they 
do much better than the United States in this most fundamental measure 
of health and well-being. The people who are most affected by this 
failure are not those who have been irresponsible--they are not 
slackers; they are not lazy. They are babies. They are mostly babies 
who have been born into poverty. This is a metric that we should feel 
morally bound to improve by leaps and bounds, but instead, we are about 
to make it worse for these babies if we don't act swiftly to prevent 
sequestration.
  If this Congress does not act to prevent this country from plunging 
over the fiscal cliff under the terms of the sequestration provisions, 
the Women, Infants, and Children program will experience a savage cut 
of 8.2 percent--a reduction of over a half a billion dollars. The 
program, which is known as WIC for short, provides nutrition and 
breast-feeding education, healthy food, and improved health care to 
millions of low-income families and mothers and children. Nearly 
735,000 participants would be cut from the program next year. These are 
not families who can just make up the difference by taking shorter 
vacations or by whipping out a little credit card. These are low-income 
families, and they would be permanently hurt.
  In my home district of New York, these cuts would seriously threaten 
the ability to deliver critical services to mothers and babies, which 
are services that they need. It disproportionately affects low-income 
families.
  Sequestration would devastate the title V Maternal and Child Health 
Services Block Grant Program. This block grant currently serves over 7 
million individuals in New York by supporting initiatives that promote 
health, that reduce economic disparities, and that combat infant 
mortality. Under the cruel consequences of sequestration, more than 5 
million fewer families would be served.
  Cuts under sequestration would mean that, in New York alone, over 
1,000 fewer women would be screened for cancer, that 11,000 fewer 
children would be vaccinated, and that 1.1 million fewer women and 
children would be receiving health care. In New York right now, about 
14,000 cases of breast cancer and over 914 cases of cervical cancer are 
diagnosed each and every year. Sequestration would cut more than 
$268,000 from the breast and cervical cancer screening program.
  In this fragile economy, States simply cannot absorb these cuts 
without cutting vital services. New York, like every other State in 
this country, has its own extreme problems, and we are running our 
State now at a deficit, and we have to make that up in a year. Under 
our State constitution, we can't carry deficits, and you can't tell a 
baby to just go out and get a job.
  Let's work together to protect these critical programs for women and 
children. It's time to change direction. It's time to acknowledge that 
elections matter, and it's time to listen to the American people. This 
bus, at great speed, is headed over a cliff, and it's time for the 
people in the majority, the people in the driver's seat here in the 
House, to take a turn and to change it.
  What would happen if we went into sequestration and if the middle 
class tax cuts expired? That would mean an increase in taxes of $2,000, 
on average, against every middle class family in America. Failing to 
take action would slow the growth of our own real GDP by 1.4 percentage 
points in 2013, and this continued gridlock would throw the United 
States back into a recession and cause the jobless rate to go up.
  Congress is going to be stuffing, I would say, a big, ugly lump of 
coal into the stockings of the American workers if we don't save this 
country from sequestration, and we know that those who would be hurt 
are those who are the most vulnerable. It was our great President, John 
F. Kennedy, who said, When you balance budgets, don't balance them on 
the backs of the poor. As to the programs that really serve the 
neediest and the most vulnerable--the children, the mothers, the 
retired women--this sequestration is going to hurt them the most. I 
would say nobody in their right mind would vote to do that.
  The American people made their wishes clear in this last election. 
They supported President Obama, and they want this Congress to get 
going and to get the job done, but at the rate we're going, we're all 
going no place fast except over a cliff. As you pointed out, the impact 
of going over this cliff will be devastating to our overall economy but 
particularly to those who are the most vulnerable--our children and our 
mothers and our elderly women.
  So I want to congratulate my colleague and partner in so many efforts 
for women, children, families, and for working Americans and, really, 
for getting a compromise, for getting a solution that will keep us from 
going over this fiscal cliff. I thank my distinguished colleague for 
organizing this.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I want to underscore a pretty shocking statistic. You 
mentioned that the United States of America is 50th in infant 
mortality. Was that the statistic?
  Mrs. MALONEY. Yes, yes. Here we are so wealthy, and yet we are 50th 
in the world in infant mortality.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. One being the best of course.
  And you mentioned countries that we wouldn't necessarily expect would 
be better than the United States--Morocco, for example--and I'm sure 
there are a bunch of others. Yet the United States of America is 50th. 
Now, many people don't live in communities in which they see that, but 
that means that there have to be neighborhoods and communities in our 
country in which the infant mortality rate is probably very much like 
those in underdeveloped countries, where they rely on programs like the 
Women, Infants, and Children program which make sure that women don't 
have underweight births, children born of low weight.
  The other thing you were talking about was the WIC program. It sounds 
like what you're saying is that we would actually be taking food out of 
the mouths of little children.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Literally, literally, and we can't afford to do it. I 
would say it really is scandalous, absolutely scandalous.
  We have to work together and prevent this from happening. Always, 
it's those parts of our society that can't afford a lobbyist, that 
don't have the money. Babies can't get jobs, and they can't hire 
lobbyists. So those programs that help poor children are going to be 
incredibly vulnerable with this sequestration. As I said, no one in 
their right mind would let this happen, yet the parties seem so far 
apart, and we don't seem to be getting the consensus that we need to 
make this happen. It's absolutely critical. Getting that consensus and 
not falling over that cliff is literally going to save lives, millions 
of lives.

                              {time}  1450

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. That's why, because we all get into the numbers game, 
we talk about a billion here and a billion there, et cetera, and that's 
why I wanted to put up a picture of the beautiful Elodie Michaud, who 
happens to actually be the daughter of Megan Michaud, who is my 
legislative director, so people can look at a face. This is the kind of 
face, if not Elodie's face, that we are talking about. Here's a mom and 
a baby, too. These are the kinds of faces that we want people to keep 
in their mind because there are real people behind these numbers. It's 
easy to say we are going to cut money from the WIC program, Women, 
Infants, and Children program, and then you realize what that would 
mean to perhaps this mother and this baby and so many across the 
country.
  Mrs. MALONEY. I would say so. And providing the resources for WIC, 
which provides food literally for children, for babies and their 
mothers, this is a fundamental measure of health and well-being around 
the country, the birth of children and the health of their mothers; and 
yet we are doing so poorly in it. We are 50th in the world in infant 
mortality. That is not a statistic; that is a scandal.

[[Page 15593]]

  Taking money away from the support of these young babies, these are 
not irresponsible people that aren't carrying their weight. These are 
not people that are slackers, like some of my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle talk about some people. They're not lazy; they just 
happen to be born poor. And in the richest country in the world, we 
have to be there. As John F. Kennedy said, we cannot balance the budget 
on the backs of the poor. It's wrong.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I thank you so much for your contributions--
continuing contributions--to the well-being of women and children.
  Yes, it's true that title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block 
Grant also does things like combat preterm birth, teen pregnancies, 
preventing chronic conditions, reducing disparities that are often 
present in our society. Let's be clear, not everybody has access to 
quality, affordable health services; and we want to improve that for 
more than 40 million women, infants, and children with special health 
care needs.
  My State uses title V funding to reduce infant mortality, prevent 
teen pregnancies, and to ensure newborn screenings, to test children 
early on for things that can become chronic conditions and make sure 
that we take care of them early, and to coordinate care for children 
with physical disabilities. And the sequestration cuts will reduce 
critical funding to these efforts by over $1.65 million in Illinois 
alone. And with those cuts, 306,000 fewer Illinois women, infants, and 
children can be served.
  Another really important area that I think a lot of people don't 
focus on is training of doctors. One of the things that sequestration, 
these automatic budget cuts, will do is reduce our ability to train 
pediatric physicians needed to ensure access to quality health care 
services to children and adolescents.
  The Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program trains 
more than 40 percent of general pediatricians and 43 percent of all 
pediatric subspecialists. Sequestration, automatic cuts, would take $21 
million from this program forcing the reduction of residency slots, 
training of doctors, at Children's Hospitals across the country. We 
want to have these quality doctors that are able to make sure that they 
can care for our children.
  I want to go back to something that Representative Maloney raised, 
and that's the WIC program--Women, Infants and Children--and 
immunizations. Experts agree that we must combat our deficit by 
bringing down the total cost of health care. That's true, but 
sequestration could result in just the opposite. The sequestration cuts 
to programs such as what we call the food stamp program, the SNAP 
program, or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, 
Infants, and Children and the 317 Immunization Program that will have 
their funding cut, if we are to reduce our national health care 
expenditures, we have to make sure that we fund those programs, those 
special nutrition programs and the immunization programs. They have a 
track record of saving money on future medical expenses.
  Imagine, you're sending your children to school and they're sitting 
next to a child who simply cannot afford to get the kind of 
immunizations they need because those funds have been cut. None of us 
want that. I certainly don't want that for my grandchildren.
  The Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, 
the WIC program, improves health outcomes by providing nutritious food 
and nutrition and breast feeding education to women and young children. 
The WIC program has resulted in healthier pregnancies, healthier birth 
outcomes, and better growth and development of young children.
  For every dollar we spend on a pregnant woman in the WIC program, as 
much as $4.21 is saved in Medicaid expenditures because WIC reduces the 
risk for preterm birth by 25 percent and low birth weight babies by 44 
percent. These are successful programs.
  In spite of the proven success and cost savings from the WIC program, 
sequestration would cut $529 million from the WIC program, which would 
allow the WIC program to serve approximately 735,000 fewer women and 
young children who are at nutrition risk, including 24,200 from my home 
State.
  I see that I have been joined by a fearless and tireless advocate for 
women and children, particularly low-income women and children. This is 
my next-door neighbor and great friend and great Congresswoman from the 
great State of Wisconsin, Gwen Moore.
  Ms. MOORE. Well, I thank you so much, my good friend from Illinois, 
Jan Schakowsky. You have always, even before your tenure as a Member of 
Congress, been an advocate for good, healthy, nutritious food. It 
really occurs to me that kids can't wait. It's not as if we malnourish 
them now, that somehow when the economy picks up, we can supply them 
with calcium and vitamin A and vitamin C, protein and iron that they 
need retrospectively and say: well, let's just pick up where we left 
off. Here's this pregnant woman who, if she can just manage to get that 
child into the world, by the time they are three or four, we'll back up 
and provide them with that nourishment.
  I can tell you that, Jan, you have for a long time been a shero in 
this. And so has my good friend, Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, who 
will be joining us very soon as well.
  We've got to take a balanced approach to this deficit reduction. 
There is just no question that these programs, which serve women, 
infants, children, will lose if sequestration takes place as scheduled. 
We know that every year, millions of women and children depend on 
health, nutrition, and other services that are provided through their 
State and local public health departments because of Federal funding.
  These services not only include nutrition but well-child and well-
mother checkups, basic immunizations, education on healthy eating and 
nutrition, and referrals, when appropriate, to programs like WIC, which 
help ensure a healthy start for women and children. Let's not fool 
ourselves, sequestration will cripple these efforts that help women and 
children.
  According to one estimate, sequestration will eliminate nearly $1 
billion in Federal funding for research and programs designed to 
promote and protect the health of women and children. Many of these 
programs have already been subject to two straight years of funding 
cuts and left flat or near-flat funding prior to that. Sequester will 
cut even deeper and for much longer.

                              {time}  1500

  So when we start saying we have to have a balanced approach in terms 
of raising revenue and cuts, we have already cut $1.7 trillion from 
these programs. You can cut to the bone and into the bone when you 
start talking about cutting these programs any more.
  Some make the argument that our Nation can no longer afford to invest 
in programs that support the health and well-being of women and 
children. I would argue that we cannot afford not to make these 
investments. We sure hear a lot about ``family values'' that, quite 
frankly, isn't reflected in the support of funding for programs that 
aim to provide the most basic of necessities for women and children in 
need.
  I want to talk about one of these programs, the Special Supplemental 
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). WIC serves 
over 9 million mothers and young children every month, including a 
majority of infants throughout our Nation, and about one in four 
pregnant women. The program focuses on low-income pregnant, 
breastfeeding, and postpartum women, infants, and children under age 5 
who are at nutritional risk. We're talking about women and youngsters 
who are low-income and at risk for some very troubling health and 
developmental outcomes and very expensive outcomes for our Nation down 
the road as their health deteriorates because we did not do basic 
preventive things like giving them a decent meal.
  Research has consistently shown that participation in WIC improves 
nutrition, resulting in overall healthier pregnancies, healthier birth 
outcomes,

[[Page 15594]]

and better growth and development of young children. Yet, this hard-
fought progress and the lives of at-risk women and children are at risk 
due to pending budget cuts.
  Administrative costs for these programs is just a steal, only about 
7.5 percent, meaning that the vast majority of these funds go to 
getting healthy food, education, and referrals to women, infants, and 
children in need. So when we talk about the cuts that are called for 
under sequestration, we aren't talking about trimming overhead or 
waste. We're talking about taking away food--food, people--and vital 
services from vulnerable populations. We're talking about denying an 
infant access to good, healthy breast milk and the food package that 
they need to help develop normally.
  WIC is a short-term intervention that makes a lifelong difference. On 
average, a woman participates for 13 months, but science tells us that 
those 13 months make a heck of a difference to mothers and children 
over a lifetime.
  If we can't agree as a nation that ensuring pregnant women, infants, 
and children are adequately nourished is a must, then what can we agree 
on? We will not balance the budget by cutting WIC and other Federal 
programs like the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, Healthy Start, 
and HIV/AIDS programs.
  WIC represents less than two-tenths percent of the Federal budget. 
Funding immunizations for children did not put our Nation in this 
fiscal mess, but it is these proven, cost-effective innovations that 
help us all which are poised to bear the brunt of these cuts. In 
allowing sequestration to occur, we put lives in jeopardy in spite of 
the considerable evidence that these programs are making a difference 
and saving costs to the taxpayers down the line.
  Thank you so much for this time, Jan. Thank you for doing this 
Special Order. When we start talking about food, we're talking about a 
very basic need. And if we're talking about cutting food from infants, 
we're talking about not making a hard choice, we're talking about 
making a cruel choice.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you so much, not only for your words today, but 
for all your work that you do on behalf of women and children every 
day.
  I want to call now on one of the incredible advocates and leaders 
when it comes to making sure that our children, in particular, and low-
income people have adequate nutrition in a country that is the richest 
in the world, an advocate for women and children from the State of 
Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Thank you very, very much. There are not enough words to 
express our thanks collectively to you, Congresswoman Schakowsky, for 
calling this Special Order today.
  As I was coming to the floor, I saw our colleague Carolyn Maloney, 
and our colleague Gwen Moore just completed her remarks, and we know 
the strength of her passion, and I know that waiting to speak today, as 
well, is Congresswoman Lois Capps.
  The issues that we talk about today are not just about women; it's 
about our families and what's happening in the lives of our families. 
It has been such an incredible road for families today, given the 
nature of the recession and how deep that recession was and how 
basically people are trying to hang on and to try to make their way to 
take care of themselves and their families. It's about maternal and 
child health. It's about their well-being. And I think that it is 
appropriate to talk about this now.
  You know, we did just come through an election, and I think one of 
the things that we saw in this election is that the issues that face 
women and children and their families were front and center. Women 
collectively addressed these issues and began to perk up their ears and 
to look to see: How am I going to take care of my family? Who is 
watching out for me and for my family?
  I know, as you are and my colleagues on this side of the aisle, we 
are very grateful for the decisions that they made, and now we have to 
make good on the promises that we made to families, and they are 
promises. We have a moral responsibility to address these issues of 
nutrition and health in this Nation. This is not something--when people 
want to say that there isn't any money to do these efforts, let's take 
a look at other areas where there is money and the enormous subsidies 
that we pay out to various interests and where we provide our Tax Code 
which we can use for good purposes but oftentimes may be used for a 
purpose that's contrary to the well-being of this Nation. Let's look to 
those places first before we start to look at cuts that affect the 
people in that photograph. They're real. They're not statistics. And 
this institution has that moral responsibility and that obligation to 
do well by them.
  My colleague, Gwen Moore, talked about the WIC program, the 
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, short-
term program, science-based. It's a lifetime of good nutrition and 
health behaviors for at-risk women and children.
  What we have here is the investment in this program. What does it do? 
It doesn't just sink to the bottom of the ocean. It means healthier 
pregnancies, healthier birth outcomes, growth and the development of 
young children. Over half the babies born in the United States every 
year and 9 million mothers every month participate in this program all 
across the United States.
  My colleague, Congresswoman Moore, talked exclusively about the WIC 
program. I was going to do that, but let me take a different tack. Let 
me talk about the bounty in this Nation that you spoke about, my 
colleague. This is a land of plenty. We produce more food than any 
other nation in the world.
  I will tell you about my congressional district, the greater New 
Haven, Connecticut, district. One out of seven people in my district go 
to bed hungry. They don't know where their next meal is coming from. 
Connecticut, statistically, is the richest State in the Nation. It is 
essentially because we have something called Fairfield County and the 
Gold Coast where there's a lot of affluence. But we also have cities 
like New Haven and Hartford and Bridgeport and others who have families 
who are at risk.

                              {time}  1510

  But what's happened with the issue when people talk about food 
insecurity, you know what it means, I know what it means, Congresswoman 
Capps knows what it means. It means people are hungry, and they don't 
know where their next meal is coming from. And we're now looking at 
food pantries that are out of food. There are all kinds of drives to 
fill up these shelves so that people who never thought they would have 
to use this kind of a service are in fact looking at the need to put 
food on their table.
  And yet we look at a set of circumstances here in the programs that 
we have jurisdiction over where we would see $134 billion in cuts to 
the food stamp program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, 
or the SNAP program. What that means is when you have that massive cut 
there, millions of people are going to be jettisoned from the ability 
to feed their families and feed themselves. And that mother and child 
in that photograph are going to be without access to food. It is 
unconscionable.
  And then I will just say one more point. The Emergency Food 
Assistance Program, which is a program for families who are not 
eligible for food stamps, their funding is dependent upon what happens 
in the food stamp program. So the young woman in Branford, Connecticut, 
who came to an event with me, in a blue-collar town, the young woman 
had a job as a human resources administrator, helped to invest pension 
funds, had three sons, 18, 14 and 10, she got up and said, I am not 
eligible for food stamps so I come to the food bank to get emergency 
food assistance. She and her family, three grown boys, eat one meal a 
day in the United States of America, a land of plenty. She had tears in 
her eyes. She wants a job. She wants to go to work. She hasn't been 
able to find one. Connecticut has 9 percent unemployment. So her family 
is eating one meal a day. It's outrageous. It's unconscionable.

[[Page 15595]]

  We have the ability in this institution to change that so that our 
children don't go to bed hungry at night. That is not who we are. 
That's not where our values are. It is that moral responsibility. And 
if we move forward with what they're talking about in these deep cuts, 
this sequestration, all it is is letting people know about the deep 
cuts, and there will be even more cuts to food programs, nutrition 
programs, which will rob people of their lives and their ability to 
succeed. And it's particularly important for our children, our babies, 
our toddlers.
  Let's have the courage not to make this happen and to pull back from 
these unconscionable cuts to our food and nutrition programs.
  Thank you for doing this. God bless you.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you for your passion, which is obvious every 
day, for making sure that we make the smart investments in our children 
and in women and in health care in this country. Thank you, Rosa 
DeLauro.
  And now it is my pleasure to bring up one of the handful of trained 
nurses that are in this House of Representatives. Lois Capps from 
California has been a leader on health care and all those programs that 
are really going to help our families to live the kinds of lives that 
all of us want to live in the United States. So thank you for joining 
us, Lois Capps of California.
  Mrs. CAPPS. I rise to voice my very strong support of our Nation's 
maternal and child health programs. And I want to thank my colleague 
from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, for getting the idea that we come 
together around this topic today because of the implications that it 
has for the beautiful young woman and her child that you're picturing 
next to you that is a reminder to all of us that these are not numbers 
when we're talking about sequestration. They really have impacts in 
people's very lives.
  So it's an honor for me to follow our colleague, Rosa DeLauro from 
Connecticut, and also to have as part of your discussion Gwen Moore, a 
very eloquent spokesperson from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So, really, this 
is very diverse in terms of regions of the country that are going to be 
impacted should we ever cross this threshold. But most of the public 
discussion we've had so far on this fiscal cliff, however it's 
described, that we face, the discussion has been about taxes, about 
who's going to pay what in taxes.
  But what has been so underreported and overlooked, which is why I'm 
so grateful to you for calling this out today for us, is the impacts 
that sequestration cuts would have on our economy, but especially on 
that vital element of our economy which is our most vulnerable in our 
society--our children.
  They're our future. They are not just statistics. They are real 
little people who cannot wait for services because their bodies will 
change, their minds will be stunted. They will lose out if we withhold 
support for them. And I speak from my many years of being a nurse, as 
you described, and being a nurse in our public sector, in our public 
schools and a public health nurse. And I've seen firsthand what happens 
when we cut services to our children. We need to be investing in our 
children because they are our economic engine for tomorrow and we 
cannot afford to leave one of them behind.
  We, therefore, can't afford to slash the very programs that will give 
them the kind of healthy start in life. You invest a dollar up front in 
a child and you recoup that dollar so many times over their lifetime 
and you prevent a lot of other kinds of dollars from being spent in 
ways that we don't want to. But sequestration would be devastating for 
our children.
  I focused on my State of California in terms of looking at what this 
would be like. These cuts, should sequestration come to pass, would be 
so devastating to the health and well-being of hundreds and thousands 
of women and children in the State I come from. For example, in the 
program that we've all been talking about because it's so central to 
what families need--food security--the Women, Infants and Children's 
program that helps those who don't have enough for their children to 
give them that healthy start, over 120,000 women and children would be 
cut from this essential program just in California if sequestration 
came to be. And this provides nutrition assistance, vital links to a 
healthy, thriving brain and body for families that might not have 
access to healthy food.
  For Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grants, nearly 400,000 
fewer women and children would be served by these block grants that go 
to the State to provide the essential services in the local 
communities. And so the ripple effect down our State and throughout our 
communities would be so tremendous because these services provide a 
wide range of health care and they allow the expansion of certain 
quality health care programs for children, for example, with 
disabilities.
  In California, we would be facing, should sequestration happen, 2,000 
fewer women having access to breast and cervical screenings, the 
preventive services that keep cancer full-blown from occurring in these 
women's lives, so costly to them personally, to their families, but 
also taxpayers, and nearly a million dollars--and this is what I want 
to close by focusing on, because we don't stop and think when we cut a 
million dollars from the Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical 
Education Program, in sequestration a million dollars would be cut just 
for these training programs in California. That program makes sure that 
we have enough resources necessary to train the next generation of 
pediatric physicians, people who are there on the front line with 
families to pull them through what they face in life.
  I met the real-life impact of this program when a remarkable young 
man came to Capitol Hill from California last year, Max Page. Now, you 
may not remember his name, but you probably remember if you watched the 
Super Bowl in 2011 little Darth Vader in the ad, the popular Volkswagen 
Super Bowl commercial. He's a real young child. He's only 7 years old. 
And I came to meet him here on Capitol Hill last year. He was born with 
a congenital heart defect--not uncommon. But it has required numerous 
surgeries during the 7 years of his short life.

                              {time}  1520

  He is being treated at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, which my 
colleagues from California know very well as an outstanding medical 
facility serving a wide region in the Southwest.
  Last year, when Max came to Washington with his parents and little 
brother, he came to tell Members of Congress his own story and how 
important it is that we continue to invest in preparing new doctors to 
care for our children. I know it's every parent's worst fear what will 
happen if their child becomes sick, not just a runny nose or a sore 
throat, but seriously ill with perhaps a life-threatening or a chronic 
condition that needs lifelong treating. We owe it to every parent in 
America to do what we can to make sure that every child has access to 
the best health care available if they need it. We don't want them to 
be concerned that there is not going to be that trained pediatrician, 
that hospital to send their sick child to should that happen, and it's 
because we couldn't get our act together and avoid the sequestration.
  So I'm so pleased that you took the time to organize this hour of 
sharing with the American people the impact of sequestration, that it 
would have such a profound effect on our lives when we think about 
ensuring that every child in America gets a healthy start to life. We 
take it for granted that every small child needs and deserves this 
right in this country that we are proud to live in, the United States 
of America.
  So we need to come together now on behalf of our Nation's children 
and their mothers and their families to stop these sequestration cuts, 
to ensure that we have a balanced approach to reducing our debt, and to 
continue to support our communities and the frontline services that 
they provide to our families, because our smallest, our most vulnerable 
and their families, they're depending on us now in this hour.
  So again, I thank you for bringing us together, my colleague from 
Illinois,

[[Page 15596]]

and for focusing us on the real-life impact of what we're facing here 
with the cliff.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Let me also just underscore the point you made about 
training pediatricians and pediatric specialists. That would affect, 
across the board, everyone who seeks--this is not just for vulnerable 
communities or individuals, but all of us with small children want to 
make sure that the doctors are there when our kids may need them. So 
this is very important. I'm glad you brought them up. Thank you.
  Mrs. CAPPS. Thank you for this opportunity.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I want to just mention another cost-effective reason 
that we should avoid cuts. For example, we have immunization programs 
that decrease our future health care costs, and let me just give you 
the actual dollar numbers.
  Every dollar we spend on the childhood vaccine series through this 
program saves our health care system $16.50 in future medical costs. By 
anybody's estimation, that's a really good return on investment, $16.50 
back for every dollar that we spend on childhood vaccines.
  Another aspect of sequestration cuts that would really hurt everyone 
are the cuts for research into the health challenges facing our 
country. The proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health of 
almost $2.5 billion will cause irreparable harm to our research 
infrastructure and our ability to treat and cure diseases. Eliminating 
funding for almost 2,400 research projects will decrease our ability to 
identify new methods to prevent and combat health challenges such as 
cancer and diabetes, impede our ability to remain the world leader in 
biomedical research, eliminate jobs in local communities throughout 
this country, and hinder our ability to train and develop the future 
leaders of our biomedical sciences workforce. Research into costly 
diseases affecting mothers and babies will be especially harmed by 
these cuts.
  The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which 
is responsible for conducting and funding research into these diseases, 
has the lowest percentage of grant applications funded of all the NIH 
institutes. The $106 million cut to the National Institute of Child 
Health and Human Development will likely worsen this trend and dampen 
our hopes of finding innovative treatments and cures for conditions 
that are affecting mothers and babies. These are just some of the 
examples of the devastating effect of sequestration cuts to maternal 
and child health programs and research. We can't afford these cuts.
  So I just want to end this hour by saying that all of us want to make 
sure that we do put our fiscal house in order. But the real question 
is, at what cost are we going to do it to certain people? Who is 
actually going to pay? I think we all have an interest in making sure 
that we keep our children, our mothers, and our families healthy, well 
fed, and make sure that we raise productive children in this country.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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