[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6364-6365]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             SEQUESTRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise once again to call on Congress to 
replace the dangerous and irrational sequester with a big and balanced 
deficit solution.
  Ten weeks after the dysfunction of this Congress led to the sequester 
taking effect, our economy and the most vulnerable in our society are 
continuing to experience its effects. On a macro level, the sequester 
has added to the uncertainty businesses and markets were already 
facing, making it even more difficult to plan for the future and 
discouraging private sector investment and development that creates 
jobs.
  Just this past Wednesday, the Federal Reserve issued a statement that 
``fiscal policy is restraining economic growth.''
  But the ill-effects of the Republican sequester policy have been most 
devastating to those who are in the greatest need and rely on Federal 
assistance. 70,000 children who will be 3 once and 4 once will be 
kicked out of Head Start. $115 million in subsidies that help low-
income parents access child care while they work will be eliminated. 
Over half a billion dollars is being taken away from children and 
family service programs. Because of the sequester, our most vulnerable 
children are at risk of losing their shot at the American Dream.
  It's not only our youngest citizens who are being hurt by 
sequestration. Low-income seniors will see 4 million fewer Meals on 
Wheels deliveries this year, putting at risk seniors who are sick and 
homebound.
  The National Institutes of Health will have to reduce life-saving 
medical

[[Page 6365]]

research, and 600,000 women, infants, and children could be dropped 
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutrition program. What an 
extraordinarily perverse version of ``women and children first''--an 
admonition to save first, not abandon first.
  Congress, Mr. Speaker, must act to replace this stupid sequester. I 
tell people that sequester starts with ``s,'' which stands for stupid. 
Congress needs to replace it with a big, balanced agreement that every 
bipartisan commission that has looked at our fiscal challenge has 
recommended. Restoring financial discipline sets America on a fiscally 
sustainable path and enables us to invest in education, innovation, and 
infrastructure that will grow our economy, create jobs and keep 
millions out of poverty and lift millions of others from poverty.

                              {time}  1010

  In order for that to happen, of course, Mr. Speaker, I think you 
should appoint budget conferees so that negotiations on such a rational 
solution can begin in earnest.
  Sadly, it's becoming increasingly clear that Republicans are in no 
hurry to complete the work on a budget as a result of the draconian, 
unrealistic, and damaging spending levels they set forth under the 
sequester. Simply put, they cannot implement the budget they adopted, 
neither through the appropriations process nor through the Ways and 
Means Committee.
  Sequestration, of course, was meant to be so unacceptable that we 
surely would not allow it to come into effect. But it has. It has 
because it reflects the spending levels Republicans have long sought.
  Now, when I say that, some Republicans say, oh, well, the sequester 
was the President's idea. Not only is the President opposed to 
sequester, Democrats in the Senate and Democrats in the House are 
opposed. Most Republicans--that is to say, 229 Republicans--voted for 
H.R. 2560, Cut, Cap, and Balance. And what this bill that 229 
Republicans voted for--and, by the way, 181 Democrats voted against--
was to say that we set numbers. If we don't meet them, what do we have? 
A sequester.
  Sequester was their policy; the across-the-board, irrational cutting 
of the highest priority and the lowest priority the same was their 
policy that they voted for, an unfortunate policy because it is so 
irrational and so harmful. Now they won't say how we can get there, of 
course, because it just isn't possible without gutting some of the most 
important programs that have a positive impact on our communities. The 
Republican Appropriations chairman, my friend, Mr. Rogers from 
Kentucky, said, on April 25:

       There will be some who are shocked. I don't think people 
     yet understand how severe the numbers will be.

  That's the Republican chairman, my friend, with whom I served for 
many years on that committee, Hal Rogers from Kentucky. ``How severe 
the numbers will be.'' They're the numbers that were in the Ryan 
budget; they're the numbers that will be affected by sequester.
  Republicans are setting up, in my view, a dangerous game of hide-and-
seek in which they will hide what sequester levels actually mean and 
try to mitigate the ones they believe will have political backlash, 
very frankly, as we did just about 12 days ago regarding the FAA.
  They know they can't achieve cuts their caucus can agree on and that 
the American people would support. And they seek, in my view, to blame 
the President and Democrats for what has been a wrong-standing 
Republican policy which I referenced in their Cut, Cap, and Balance 
legislation for which 229 of them voted for on July 19, 2011.
  To do so, Republicans proposed shifting the defense portion of the 
sequester--``to do so,'' meaning to get to the numbers that they 
proposed--by shifting the defense portion of the sequester on to 
domestic programs. In other words, the cuts that would normally be 
across the board, their solution is to simply shift them to some of the 
programs that I mentioned earlier in terms of Head Start, Meals on 
Wheels, and other programs that are so necessary to make sure that some 
of the least of ours are taken care of.
  Of course, this is a breaking of the agreement reached in the Budget 
Control Act of 2011. We all know the likely outcome of these partisan 
games, Mr. Speaker. House Republicans will once again be divided, as 
they were a week before we left, and prevent the adoption of a budget 
that includes a balanced approach.
  Now, balanced approach, I won't like all of it. My friend, Mr. Jones, 
won't like all of it. None of us will like all of it because it will be 
balanced and we'll have to take the good with the bad. But what it will 
be is an effort and a reality of getting America on a fiscally 
sustainable, credible path. Democrats are ready to make tough choices 
necessary to reach a compromise, and both sides have a responsibility--
my side, their side. Very frankly, we ought to be one side, the 
American side. Both sides have a responsibility to work together to 
meet our challenges in a sensible way, not a senseless, irrational way, 
which is what the sequester does, but in a smart way, worthy of our 
role as the American people's representatives.

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