[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11581]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT FURLOUGHS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, on July 1, the front page of The 
Washington Post had a headline which showed in many respects just, 
again, the disconnect between this town and the rest of the country. It 
said: ``They said the sequester would be scary. Mostly they were 
wrong.''
  I would like those reporters to have joined me on July 3, 2 days 
later, when I went to the Groton Navy Base in southeastern Connecticut 
to talk to over 100 civilian DOD employees who were on the verge of 
being furloughed because of sequestration. Again, under sequester, 
650,000 civilian DOD employees, for 1 day a week for the next 11 weeks, 
will be furloughed, or lose 20 percent of their paycheck, despite the 
fact that they contribute enormous value to the military readiness of 
this country.
  Again, at that meeting, where I was joined by Captain Carl Lahti, who 
is the commander of the sub base, he talked about the fact that among 
the furloughed employees are crane operators, folks who install 
torpedoes, Tomahawk missiles, all the supplies to make sure that our 
attack sub fleet is ready to go at any given time. Again, losing them 1 
day a week just pushes back the readiness of the submarine fleet.
  I talked to Adam Puccino, who is the head of the Metal Trades Council 
and represents the maintenance crews on the base to make sure that the 
tip of the spear of America's Navy is ready to go. Again, losing those 
folks 1 day a week is going to slow down and retard the ability of that 
fleet to be ready.

                              {time}  1030

  Rob Faulise, who is the head of the NAGE force, talked about the 
staff that provides critical services, whether it's health care, 
firefighter services, clerical work, to make sure that that subbase is 
ready to accomplish its mission.
  In every case, they all confirm the fact that not only is this going 
to cause personal hardship, but it's also going to harm the military 
capability of that base.
  I received a number of emails from folks who were there that day or 
whose coworkers told them about that meeting. Here is what some of them 
said.
  Kimberly from Ledyard, Connecticut, said:

       I am a Federal employee working on the Navy base in Groton. 
     I am a GS-5 step 2, which means I make $17 an hour and am 
     paid biweekly. I am married with three children, ages 6, 4, 
     and 1. My husband works part time, and is already capped at a 
     salary range of $16.54 an hour. It's already hard enough to 
     make ends meet as it is, and now, with the furlough, I'm 
     losing $226.44 every pay period.

  Robert from North Stonington:

       As a member of DOD, specifically the Department of the 
     Navy, working in Groton, I am now in the second week of 
     furloughs. As a civilian employee for the past 39 years, I 
     have never seen our government in such disarray. My command, 
     supervisor of shipbuilding, performs extremely important jobs 
     of government oversight of the design, construction and 
     repair of our country's nuclear submarine fleet.

  John from Groton:

       Furloughs will immediately manifest themselves in the local 
     economies around every U.S. military base in the form of 20 
     percent fewer goods, gas and groceries being bought and in 20 
     percent fewer taxes being paid into town and State coffers 
     that are already at an all-time low.

  Lastly, Aurela from Gales Ferry, Connecticut, said:

       As a result of the civilian furloughs at the Navy branch 
     health clinic, I believe our patients' access to care and 
     continuity of quality care will be severely hampered. Our 
     military and their dependents don't have the option to be 
     sick or injured on a non-furlough day. Clinic staff has been 
     trained to refer patients to urgent care facilities and to 
     emergency rooms as a last resort, largely due to the 
     sequester. Where is the wisdom of forcing the use of higher 
     cost facilities in a fiscal crisis?

  Thank you, Aurela, because it shows that, in fact, these furloughs 
don't really save anything structurally or long term for government. 
What is clearly needed is for Congress to respond to sequester based on 
what its original intention was. If you go to Phil Gramm, the 
granddaddy of sequestration--the Gramm-Rudman sequester act of 1985, 
which today sequester is verbatim based on--he stated in a speech in 
Washington not too long ago:

       It was never the objective of Gramm-Rudman to trigger the 
     sequester. The objective of Gramm-Rudman was to have the 
     threat of the sequester force compromise and action.

  Again, that's from the inventor of sequestration.
  Seven times, Chris Van Hollen and the House Democratic minority have 
tried to get the Rules Committee to allow a vote to be taken on a 
measure to turn off sequester, replacing it with smarter cuts and 
smarter revenue to achieve the goal of deficit reduction, but to do it 
without a chain saw that is disrupting the lives of those individuals 
whose stories I just described. In every single instance, the Rules 
Committee denied the ability of this House to vote on a commonsense 
measure to turn off sequester.
  Folks, we are now 4\1/2\ months into sequester. Its impact extends 
even beyond the Department of Defense. In Head Start programs, kids are 
losing slots, and NIH research grants are being canceled. It is time 
for Congress to listen to Phil Gramm, to compromise, to act to turn off 
sequester, and to represent these hardworking Americans who every 
single day are serving our Nation.

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