[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9586-9587]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                THE IMPACTS OF CONGRESSIONAL DYSFUNCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Kilmer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KILMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the damage from 
Congress' inability to do its job and pass a budget, and the 
unreasonable lengths that folks have to go to cover for the reckless 
policy of sequestration.
  As I said the very first time I spoke in this Chamber, Congress 
should be doing all it can to replace the across-the-board cuts caused 
by sequestration with a balanced, bipartisan, long-term budget. Cutting 
across the board is not a strategy. In fact, it's anti-strategic.
  Unfortunately, this Congress has been stuck in ``park'' when it comes 
to working toward a long-term budget. In fact, Congress has only passed 
13 bills in 6 months, none of them dealing with jobs, and none of them 
working to replace these nonstrategic cuts.
  Congress needs to understand the impacts of its dysfunction. In my 
district, we see those consequences every day.
  I'm a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and I'm proud to 
represent several military installations, including Naval Base Kitsap 
and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and I represent many men and women who 
work at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The Navy, in fact, is the largest 
employer in my district.
  I'm frequently copied on emails from civilian Navy workers who are 
resigning because of the disarray caused by Congress, the threat of 
furloughs, and the loss of cost-of-living adjustments. Workers often 
choose those jobs, despite lower salaries, because they love their 
country and they want to protect it. Also, government offers stability 
that the private industry often can't.
  But these workers no longer feel valued; and thanks to Congress, 
working at the shipyard doesn't even offer stability anymore. It's 
affecting the morale of our workers and the ability of our shipyard to 
execute its mission.
  Here's a direct quote from a manager who contacted me. He wrote:

       We will have problems retaining professionals if this 
     fiscal environment continues.

[[Page 9587]]

     We will have trouble accomplishing our current workload, let 
     alone providing any level of increased engineering support.

  Mr. Speaker, this will only cost us more in the long run. This 
dysfunction in Congress is directly responsible for good workers 
walking away and is threatening the mission of the United States Navy.
  It also affects the local contractors and small businesses in my 
district that support these missions. They're already facing sweeping 
layoffs and tremendous uncertainty.
  Here's another example: Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, in my district, 
while mostly spared from furloughs under sequestration, still is 
limited in its ability to fill jobs made vacant by attrition. The 
hiring freeze went into effect right as they were planning on adding 
600 workers.
  The shipyard has the work. Our region needs the jobs. They've only 
recently announced that they can slowly hire to cover for some 
attrition.

                              {time}  1030

  Because of these constraints, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has resorted 
to asking anyone--upper level staff, anybody who has carried a tool bag 
or used a wrench--to help deliver three submarines and an aircraft 
carrier back to the fleet. That's a testament to the lengths people are 
going to to cover for such an insane policy like sequestration.
  We have seen the same thing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where 10,000 
civilian employees have received notice of furloughs. We have seen it 
affect military training where we've seen rotations to the National 
Training Center cancelled. General Brown at Joint Base Lewis-McChord 
told our paper:

       It's a huge impact on training. Where is the fine line 
     where you go from being the best in the world to second best?

  It's not right that Congress doesn't have their backs on this. We 
have got to stop this policy. From my perspective and from the 
perspective of the folks who have to deal with this damaging policy 
every day, it doesn't matter who's to blame for the idea of 
sequestration. All that matters is that both parties work together to 
stop it.
  Every day that this Congress doesn't work on coming together on a 
balanced, long-term budget is another day that folks around the country 
have to cover for Congress' dysfunction. Democrats and Republicans need 
to work together on this. This doesn't make sense for the folks in my 
district who face losing up to 20 percent of their pay or for the folks 
in my district who can't apply for an open job because of our budget 
uncertainty.
  It doesn't make sense for the kids in Head Start programs who are 
hurt by sequestration. We should stop these across-the-board cuts for 
them, too.
  The right solution is for Congress to replace these cuts altogether 
with a balanced, long-term budget. I am ready to work with both parties 
to get this done for our national security, for our economy, and for 
the American people who deserve better.

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