[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Page 3602]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          SEQUESTER MITIGATION

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the 
bipartisan Udall-Collins flexibility plan, which is designed to help 
mitigate the damaging effects of the automatic spending cuts our 
country now faces, commonly called the sequester. If left unchanged, 
these indiscriminate sequester cuts will undermine services that 
hardworking families rely on and harm our economic growth during this 
fragile recovery.
  So what is the sequester and how did our politics deteriorate so 
badly that we are left to watch as this self-inflicted wound is leveled 
on our country? It boils down to two problems that both Democrats and 
Republicans readily acknowledge deserve our attention: our national 
deficit and debt. In some ways it is just as the President has 
described it: a matter of pure math. The Federal Government is spending 
more than it is taking in and that picture is not projected to change 
in the long run--in fact, it is projected to get worse.
  And this has been a long time coming. In 2010, I was part of a core 
group of Senators who urged the White House to establish a bipartisan 
fiscal commission that would help us address our debt and deficit. The 
administration heard our call and established a debt and deficit panel 
to recommend a balanced and comprehensive way to get our fiscal house 
in order. Their plan, as you know Mr. President, is now commonly 
referred to as the Simpson-Bowles plan. Former Republican Wyoming 
Senator Al Simpson and Former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles led 
the effort and both Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate 
embraced the framework that pushed for spending cuts, raising revenue 
and responsibly reforming our entitlements. With bipartisan support for 
such a balanced plan, it should have been an open-and-shut case, which 
is why I endorsed the idea and repeatedly encouraged my colleagues to 
bring it to the floor for a vote.
  The problem is that it doesn't just take some bipartisanship to get 
anything done around here; it takes a lot of bipartisanship--60 votes 
in the Senate and 218 votes in the House of Representatives. Ideologues 
on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers have since dug in their 
heels, totally unwilling to set aside differences to reach a 
compromise.
  So that brings us back to the sequester. Because Congress cannot 
agree on a balanced and bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit, we are 
left with these automatic and blunt across-the-board cuts.
  There is no doubt that we must reduce the deficit, which is why I 
have been saying for months that we ought to bring forward the Simpson-
Bowles plan and find a way to achieve deficit reduction in a more 
thoughtful and strategic way. That approach would include additional 
revenue and shoring up our entitlements. In theory, many of my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle agree with this approach. But at 
the end of the day, there just aren't enough of them with the courage 
to support a balanced, deficit-reduction plan. We owe it to the 
American people to be honest. Let's just acknowledge that we have 
reached an impasse.
  And until there are enough Members willing to make the difficult 
decisions we are left with these terrible and indiscriminate cuts to 
our Government. Let's get it straight: the sequester is not a solution. 
It is neither smart, nor strategic--it wasn't designed to be. I firmly 
believe that the sequester will leave our Government frayed and our 
economy weakened.
  The sheer magnitude of the sequester cuts will not only damage our 
economy, but will also put our national security at a level of risk 
that could have been avoided had Congress exercised the courage to pass 
a bipartisan and balanced plan. We can do better, and the Udall-Collins 
plans suggests that there are more reasonable ways to find these 
savings than implementing blunt, thoughtless cuts.
  Our plan says, ``Wait a minute, if we really have to live with these 
terrible cuts, shouldn't we at least be strategic about how and where 
we make them?''
  The proposal that Senator Collins and I have put forward is not about 
providing flexibility to choose between cutting children's education 
funding in New York City versus Kansas City. Our plan simply provides 
the administration and Congress with the flexibility to look at where 
our Government's highest-value investments are so we can continue to 
invest in them, while cutting back in areas that do not provide 
mission-critical value for Americans.
  While there are still difficult decisions to make and tough choices 
to confront, the best way forward is through a collaborative process 
between the administration and Congress--as the Udall-Collins plan 
would provide.
  Last week, the Senate voted down a politically motivated flexibility 
proposal. Senator Collins and I are not interested in proposing a 
partisan plan. Instead, we offer a plan that is both reasonable and 
feasible because it calls for strategic decision-making that allows for 
the least disruption possible for our constituents as the executive 
branch implements $85 billion in spending cuts over the next 7 months.
  Further underscoring the need for a comprehensive flexibility plan, 
several members of Congress introduced this week amendments to a 
funding bill called a continuing resolution that propose flexibility in 
implementing sequestration for individual agencies or departments that 
were immediately hit by the effects of the automatic budget cuts. These 
amendments are mainly focused on providing flexibility for particular 
agencies, while the bipartisan Udall-Collins approach proactively 
provides for strategic decision-making and flexibility across all 
agencies in our Government.
  Coloradans know we are all in this together. When the pioneers had a 
wagon train breakdown, they didn't quibble about who was to blame. They 
fixed the wheel. When bad weather rolled in while crossing the divide, 
they didn't argue about who put them in harm's way--they came together 
and supported each other in order to survive.
  In that vein, we ought to continue working on a Simpson-Bowles 
inspired plan that raises revenue by closing tax loopholes and asks the 
well-off to do a little more, reforms our entitlements to shore them up 
over the long term, and finds areas of our budget where we can pare 
back Government spending. If we can finally agree on a balanced 
solution like this, we would--in effect--fix the wagon wheel and get us 
through the storm so that we can move on to the other serious 
challenges confronting our country, like energy and immigration reform, 
fighting terrorists and building an economy that is set to lead the 
global economic race.
  At this point, we are left with very few workable options. The 
sequester will be damaging no matter what, but let's work together to 
ensure its impact is not unnecessarily debilitating to our Government, 
our national security, and our economy. Most importantly, let's not do 
unnecessary harm to hardworking, middle-class families across this 
Nation.
  I urge my colleagues to join Senator Collins and me in supporting our 
amendment to give Congress and the White House the authority to more 
strategically implement the sequestration cuts. By working together, we 
can make the best out of a bad situation and agree on a wholesale, 
balanced and bipartisan plan to address our fiscal imbalances.

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