Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012
Floor Speech
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Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 5652, ``Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012,'' which slashes $238 billion over 10 years and cancels the discretionary sequestration scheduled for 2013 to exempt defense spending from the cuts agreed upon by the Republican majority in the Budget Control Act of 2011. This bill is unfair to children, seniors, women, and working families. This abomination is unworthy of a civilized nation. Little wonder that so many faith-based and leading national organizations, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the National Education Association oppose this bill. I stand with them in strong opposition to this assault on working and middle class families.
My Democratic colleagues and I agree that the scheduled sequester, with its indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts, should be replaced with a balanced deficit reduction package that includes both spending cuts and additional revenues. Republicans disagree and would let the burden and cost of deficit reduction fall on the shoulders of children, seniors, working families, and the middle class rather than close even one special interest tax loophole or ask any sacrifice of the truly wealthy.
This bill makes cuts to critical safety-net programs that millions of people rely on, all while returning to policies that sparked the recession in the first place. They are choosing the wrong programs to cut in order to reduce the deficit. Let me highlight a few examples to illustrate just how extreme and unfair this legislation is.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5652 makes cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the program formerly known as food stamps) that would result in reducing benefits for all 46 million SNAP participants--one million of whom live in Los Angeles County--and terminate assistance for at least two million. Low-income households who do not lose benefits altogether will face monthly reductions of $50, $60, or even $90 a month. In 2010, SNAP kept 4.4 million people from being poor, 1 million of whom were lifted out of poverty just from the increase in SNAP benefits that began in 2009.
You cannot make a nation's economy healthy by impoverishing its people.
A 9-year panel study conducted by the Department of Agriculture showed that the federal food assistance program alone was responsible for lifting low-income persons purchasing power by six percent. This is a program that is proven to work, and yet the this Republican bill seeks to slash it $33.2 billion. With cuts of this magnitude, eligibility for the program will have to be scaled back dramatically, and benefits will be cut deeply for those who still qualify. This will have serious effects on millions of low-income families who rely on the program just to get by.
The bill also proposes to end the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services has awarded more than $90.6 million in Prevention Fund grants to my home state of California. These grants are used to combat obesity, tobacco use, unhealthy nutrition practices, and to fund other programs that promote good health. If the Republican sequestration replacement were to become law, these essential programs will have to be scaled back or cut entirely.
Mr. Speaker, we need get our fiscal house in order but I will not vote to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the vulnerable, or the middle class.
My Democratic colleagues and I supported a balanced approach to the current fiscal challenge that preserves Medicare. House Republicans favor ending Medicare as we know it, along with gutting the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Child Tax Credit.
The Republican approach is unfair, unwise, and short-sighted. For example, childhood immunizations are among the most cost effective preventative health measures available. On average each dollar invested in children's immunization saves $16.50 in medical and societal costs down the road. Given the persistent rise in the cost of treating serious health problems it makes absolutely no sense to cut programs that will lead to substantial cost reductions in the future.
Mr. Speaker, this bill would leave our most vulnerable citizens exposed and unprotected. I cannot and will not support legislation inflicts such grave hardship on the most vulnerable of our citizens while asking nothing of those who benefited most from the reckless economic policies of the previous administration.
We cannot have a serious conversation about getting our budget under control when House Republicans are taking large items like revenue and defense off the table, all while repealing programs like the Social Services Block Grant. This unique grant allows states to help their citizens become more self-sufficient by providing child care, preventing and addressing child abuse, and supporting care for the elderly and disabled. Slashing the Social Services Block Grant program in an effort to avoid the defense cuts reflects poorly upon those who propose do so.
Mr. Speaker, if House Republicans are unwilling to abide the agreement they made just last year, how can they be trusted to keep faith with promises made to seniors, children, the poor and weak, that bind us together as a nation?
What we need right now is for responsible leaders to work together to come to an agreement on a balanced long-term approach to resolve our fiscal challenges. As legislators, our constituents are looking to us to get on with, and serious about, the work that must be done to get our fiscal house in order and make the needed investments that will grow our economy and position our people to compete and with in an increasingly globalized world. That is what they sent us here to do and they deserve no less.
Mr. Speaker, my constituents did not send me to Congress to make the wrong choice for our nation. That is why I cannot support the legislation before us. It places the burden for the nation's financial crisis squarely on the shoulders of the middle class and the poor, while failing to ask anything of those most able to contribute toward economic recovery.
For these reasons, I stand in strong opposition to H.R. 5625, the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012, and urge my colleagues to join me in rejecting this radical and dangerous proposal.
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