[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5790-5791]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        SEQUESTRATION'S EFFECTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, 7 weeks on, Americans have already begun to 
feel the effects of the Republican policy of sequestration.
  Sequestration defies common sense and is irresponsible. It is 
happening because the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party is 
hell-bent on cutting spending, no matter what the consequences, no 
matter how irrationally it is done, and no matter how adverse the 
consequences of these cuts.
  These arbitrary, across-the-board cuts to Federal programs without 
regard to our priorities was never meant to be a solution, but rather, 
a deterrent to Congress failing to reach one.

                              {time}  1010

  Since coming into effect on March 1, Americans are seeing why 
sequestration is not a policy we should follow or continue. This week, 
the FAA began furloughs for 47,000 employees. I've talked to the 
Secretary and I've talked to the Deputy Assistant Secretary. They do 
not have an option under the policies that this Congress has adopted. 
Thirteen thousand air traffic controllers are among those 47,000.
  Already, delays of up to 2 hours at major airports are disrupting 
travel, which impacts business and produces major headaches for 
American families trying to get to where they need to go. Some flights 
have been diverted because the air traffic control system is being 
overwhelmed with limited personnel.
  In addition to its effects on the FAA, sequestration is also placing 
a heavy burden on small business. According to an article in Politico 
on April 16--just a few days ago--small businesses are being hit the 
hardest by sequestration's cuts. The Small Business Administration is 
being forced to cut $16.7 million in loan subsidies; those are 
guarantees. That means $16.7 million in loans--capital--not available 
to small businesses. At the same time, the article goes on to report as 
many as 956,000 small business jobs could be at risk from sequestration 
as employers lay off their workers in anticipation of further cuts.
  We ought to abandon this stupid policy.
  Also at stake are critical research programs in medicine and science 
research that fuel American innovation and advance lifesaving 
treatments. They're at risk because of sequestration. Cuts to the 
National Institutes of Health are already leading to a reduction in 
research grants, including tens of millions of dollars that will halt 
innovative genomics and cancer research at some of America's top 
universities, including Harvard, Penn, and Johns Hopkins in my State. 
And the National Science Foundation will have to award 1,000 fewer 
grants this year to researchers who are helping keep America on top of 
technology and innovation. How irrational.
  This is a stupid, harmful, future-hurting, and America-undercutting 
policy. It must be changed.
  Sequestration is also reducing our military readiness and putting 
civilian defense employees at risk of being furloughed and, more to the 
point, putting at risk our own national security. Communities in my 
district across Maryland and throughout the country whose economies 
depend on a strong military are going to be hard hit.
  But the good news is there is an alternative. Congress has the power 
to end sequestration by reaching a big and balanced solution to 
deficits that can replace these irrational cuts. But to do so, 
Democrats and Republicans will have to work together in a bipartisan 
way. We ought to go to conference on the budget, adopt a fiscally 
responsible and balanced plan, and eliminate the sequester for this 
year and the 8 years to come.
  We offered an alternative to sequester four times in the last month, 
and four times we were not given the opportunity to have it voted upon 
on this floor. This was supposed to be open and transparent, and we 
would consider alternatives. We did not. But I believe we can do it. 
Our economy, our ability to create jobs, and the success of our country 
in the decade ahead is dependent on our jettisoning these irrational 
cuts we call sequestration.
  Too many jobs, lives, and livelihoods are at stake for Congress to 
engage in partisan games. As the weeks and months continue without 
turning sequestration off, its effects will only get worse.
  Let's act now. Let's act together. Let's act in a bipartisan way 
before our people and our businesses feel the full effects of this 
irrational and senseless sequestration policy. Let's work together to 
achieve the big, balanced solution the American people deserve from 
their Congress and that we owe to our country.
  I will submit an article for the Record written by our colleague, 
Representative David Price of North Carolina, entitled: ``Lawmakers' 
sequestration double-talk.''

              [From the Charlotte Observer, Apr. 23, 2013]

                  Lawmakers' Sequestration Double-Talk

                     (By U.S. Rep. David E. Price)

       Double-talk is never in short supply in Washington. But as 
     the axe of ``sequestration''--the across-the-board spending 
     cuts triggered by Congress' failure to pass a long-term 
     budget plan--begins to fall, self-contradiction and hypocrisy 
     have reached heights unusual even for the Capitol.
       Indeed, many of the same Congress members who welcomed 
     sequestration as a way to force the president to cut spending 
     are now protesting loudly when their pet programs feel the 
     pain. Members who voted for the package that Speaker John 
     Boehner said included ``90 percent'' of what Republicans 
     wanted now claim that sequestration does not need to hurt 
     very much and accuse the president of imposing cuts for 
     political effect.
       The reality is that sequestration was designed to cut both 
     deeply and indiscriminately. Although it barely touches the 
     two main deficit drivers--tax expenditures and entitlement 
     spending--it was supposed to be sufficiently draconian and 
     unacceptable to force action on those fronts, to compel 
     agreement on a comprehensive budget plan along the lines of 
     the 2010 Bowles-Simpson Commission proposal or the budget 
     agreements that produced four years of surpluses under 
     President Bill Clinton.
       Congress failed to produce such a plan, however, because 
     Republicans refused to consider increasing revenues or 
     closing special-interest loopholes. Today's Republicans value 
     their anti-tax ideology far more than the defense cuts that 
     were supposed to drive them to the bargaining table. As 
     sequestration approached, more and more of them said, ``Bring 
     it on.''
       Now that the cuts are coming, members are scrambling, 
     sometimes to apply Band-Aids, sometimes to insist that the 
     president spare programs they favor. One day there is an 
     outcry about reduced meat inspections, on another an 
     insistence that tuition benefits for military personnel be 
     restored, on another that air-traffic controllers be kept on 
     duty in little-used airports. The latest uproar started two 
     days ago. Federal Aviation Administration furloughs of air 
     traffic controllers at large airports kicked in, delaying 
     flights across the country--at Charlotte Douglas 
     International Airport 31.2 percent of flights were delayed. 
     My North Carolina colleague, Rep. Renee Ellmers, recently 
     introduced a bill to reverse Medicare cuts for cancer 
     treatment, calling the cuts an ``unintended consequence'' of 
     sequestration. In fact, the 2 percent cuts were an intended 
     and easily anticipated consequence of sequestration.

[[Page 5791]]

       Congress has now passed appropriations bills for the 
     remainder of 2013, locking in place the sequestration 
     spending levels. Scattered provisions mitigate specific 
     sequestration impacts, but the result often is to shift the 
     cuts to equally important areas that aren't in the news at 
     the moment. Fort Bragg, adjacent to my district, now faces a 
     furlough of civilian employees and a 34 percent cut in its 
     operating budget. And sequestration comes on top of $1 
     trillion in cuts to domestic programs already adopted. 
     Together, these cuts have driven major disease research off a 
     cliff--fewer than 10 percent of proposals to fund heart 
     disease, cancer and diabetes research are being funded--and 
     slowed road and bridge construction to a snail's pace.
       I want to mitigate the harm as much as any member of 
     Congress. But damage control is not a viable budget policy. 
     Sequestration is a self-inflicted wound, unworthy of those 
     who profess to govern. It is hypocritical and misleading, 
     having imposed indiscriminate cuts on the administration, to 
     pretend that the president can fix the problems with a flick 
     of the wrist.
       The remedy lies in a comprehensive budget agreement that 
     puts revenues and all categories of spending on the table. 
     The president's budget reflects such an approach, going 
     beyond the comfort zone of many of his political allies. A 
     similar offer was spurned by Speaker Boehner and House 
     Republicans in December, and sequestration ensued. It is a 
     failure of historic proportions and it must be reversed.

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