Concurrent Budget Resolution on the Budget, Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I would be happy to address that question from my senior Senator and good friend, Mr. Warner. As he indicated--and I think I can maybe say it a little bit more strongly than he could because he would be a little bit modest. I know of many people in this body who have great experience in governance, great experience in the business sector. I do not know of anyone who has worked harder on issues of fiscal responsibility and who has a greater track record in the business world of understanding what true fiscal responsibility is than my colleague Senator Warner, and I am glad to engage in this colloquy with him.

I also want to thank our chairwoman, Senator Murray, for a job well done in helping shepherd this budget through committee to the floor. This debate, both in committee and here on the floor, that will take place in the next few days will illuminate important choices we need to make as a nation and will illuminate important differences between the Senate's approach and the House's approach.

I echo comments Senator Warner made. This Senate budget is a compromise, like all are, and there will be more compromise that should take place in any normal process. But the budget does a very good job in a number of ways. It tackles the task, the challenging task of deficit reduction to get us to figures that would be very much the equivalent of what had been recommended in the Simpson-Bowles report, as Senator Warner indicated. It focuses upon economic growth, a growth agenda, which is the most important thing we need to be focused on in this body, and it does it in a balanced way that incorporates real savings and also appropriate reform of revenues.

It is impossible to fix a balance sheet by just focusing on one side of the balance sheet. Business leaders know this. Governors know this. Everyday Americans know this. I commend Chairwoman Murray and the other members of the committee, and I echo the comments made by my colleague, Senator Warner, about the budget having the critical components.

I feel very confident, if this budget were enacted as is with no change to an apostrophe, comma, or a line item, this budget would be a positive result for the American economy. It would promote growth, and it would find us continuing on a path to responsible deficit reduction to reach the levels of debt, deficit, or GDP which are appropriate from economic terms.

I would not say the same about the House budget. If it were enacted without a change, comma, or apostrophe, it would not be a positive thing for the American economy--it could be somewhat catastrophic or cataclysmic for the economy.

To get to the question, my senior Senator and friend has asked me about the effects of sequester in Virginia. As some of you might know, I took the floor for my maiden speech on this topic last month--a little bit earlier than I would have wished to have spoken as a freshman Senator. With the spectre of the sequester having such a significant effect on the Commonwealth of Virginia, I felt I couldn't be silent on it. A Senator colleague from Hawaii is here, Senator Hirono, who I know feels equally strongly about this issue.

I took a tour throughout Virginia in the middle of February, which was designed as sequester was looming. We spoke to people who were affected, especially in the armed services area. I heard their stories about the sequester and the anxieties and threats it posed. Beginning in early April, 90,000 DOD civilian employees will begin to be furloughed in the Commonwealth of Virginia, hundreds of thousands nationally. This will have a very significant effect on the kitchen table, family pocketbook discussions which are happening all over the Commonwealth. This will be a very significant change to the individuals and the lives of their communities.

Mr. WARNER. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. KAINE. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. WARNER. I would ask the Senator, I know he has seen and is very familiar with these installations and their families because of his tenure as Governor. You may also want to make the point: in an area such as Hampton Roads where you put these folks on furlough with literally 88,000, 98,000 immediately affected, will the Senator speak about the point of the ripple effect this has for literally thousands of others who provide the support services--restaurants, gas stations, auto repair, you name it--which rely on those folks having jobs as well?

Mr. KAINE. Absolutely. I am pleased the Senator brought this up. When folks are furloughed and they see their pay reduced, they will spend less at the drycleaner and less at the restaurant. They will delay the purchase of the automobile they planned for this year. They will be doing all kinds of things to tighten their spending. This will affect shopkeepers and merchants in their area.

When I was Governor, early in my term Ford decided to close a plant in Norfolk with a couple of thousand workers. The ripple effect of that was felt throughout the economy, a couple of thousand workers, was very significant. To take 90,000 civilian DOD employees in a State such as Virginia, heavily concentrated in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and furlough them and reduce their salaries will be felt throughout the economy. These civilian furloughs are one of the many effects of sequester.

Sometimes when people hear about furloughs of Department of Defense civilian employees, they might think it is someone sitting in an office. Who knows what they are doing? You need to think about who these people are. I visited Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, one of the premier facilities in the United States which treats wounded warriors, the people who have sacrificed so much for this Nation. When I was dialoguing with a wounded warrior and his wife at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, they raised sequester. I thought they were raising sequester about something about their veterans' benefits. No. Instead, what they wanted to know is, My nurse is a DOD civilian and my physical therapist is a DOD civilian. Are the people we are asking to care for those who have borne the scars of battle--are they going to have reduced care because of this sequester? This is who these DOD civilian employees are, doing wonderful work, such as the nurses at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

Outside of the DOD civilian space, let's move into the private sector world. On this tour I went to the Newport News Shipyard. Senator Warner and I were there last Saturday for a wonderful occasion honoring former Senator John Warner. This is a shipyard we in Virginia are proud of and proud of nationally. It is a great story. We manufacture the largest and most sophisticated items manufactured on the planet Earth in the Commonwealth of Virginia, nuclear aircraft carriers. They are manufactured and refurbished in Newport News at this shipyard. It is a very special technical expertise, the construction and refurbishing of these aircraft carriers. They are heel-to-toe for months. Then one leaves and the next one comes in. If you get out of line or delay, everything becomes backed up. The result is your shipping fleet isn't ready or as operational as it should be.

There was a pier, a drydock, filled in because the Truman was supposed to be coming in for a new refurbishment. It was stopped and sitting across the water in Newport. They couldn't start work because of sequester and uncertainty about the CR.

Many other shipyards in the Hampton Roads area, private, small ship repairs but without the financial muscle of a Huntington Ingalls of Newport News Shipyard, have issued warn notices to lay off employees because the Navy indicated in quarters three and four they would need to scale back on repairs. These were some of the effects they were seeing.

I went to a National Guard armory in Stanton, which was very interesting. I learned the National Guard in Stanton is called the Stonewall Brigade. Their first activity on behalf of the defense of the Nation occurred 20 years before the French and Indian wars. The Stonewall Brigade in Stanton began in 1740 defending the Nation, and they were talking to me about sequester.
How does sequester affect the Guard in Virginia, the Stonewall Brigade? It affects their ability to train their people. A whole series of training exercises planned for the next months or years is now jeopardized. They will not be able to train.

The commander of the brigade said, My people will do anything, but I would rather have them take on the tasks and the challenge knowing they are 100 percent trained and ready, rather than 85 or 90 percent trained and ready. This is an important responsibility we have to those men and women who sign up to be guardsmen in Virginia. Once again, whether it was our DOD civilians, ship repairers, wounded warriors, or guards men and women, you see these immediate effects sequester has in Virginia.

Of all the effects I have mentioned, I will say there was only one which made goosebumps come up on my arm. They were all of concern to me, but there was one which really made me stop and think. I went to visit an ROTC unit at the University of Virginia, which combined students from Navy, Army, and Air

Force ROTC programs at UVA, to sit with me and speak about their career path. They spoke about their love for their country, their patriotism and willingness to sacrifice and put themselves in harm's way for their country.

One of them basically said this: I am willing to sign up voluntarily for a career path which will put me in harm's way--because I know it is a dangerous world. But as I am making a decision about my career, I hadn't really factored in the notion, Is my civilian political leadership willing to support me? When I watch Congress indiscriminately cutting budgets and doing an across-the-board cut to the military of the size sequester suggests, I need to ask myself--I will put myself in harm's ways, face bullets, danger, and the likelihood I could be a wounded warrior and a vet in a bed at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital once in my life. Do I want to face the risk a Congress might impose these types of cuts which are so nonstrategic and thereby send a signal to me what we are doing isn't that valuable?

This was chilling to me. This is the message we send, whether it be the ship welders who could be ship repairers or go somewhere else or bright and talented college students who could be military officers or do something else. When we send a signal from this place, people pay attention. If the signal we send is we have a wavering commitment and are willing to do nonstrategic across-the-board cuts, it is not only affecting today but it could potentially have an effect down the road.

There is an answer to this, a solution. What I heard repeatedly on the trail from Virginians of all political parties is fix this, make a deal, find a compromise, listen to the other side. No one said to me fix this; fix my problem by taking more money away from someone else. I didn't have the warriors say: Fix our defense cuts by cutting Head Start or by cutting other priorities more.

They said go find the kind of balanced approach which would involve cuts and savings, and we all know how to do them. This would also involve the kinds of revenues we need to find a balance to this problem.

The other good thing is we can fix this. In fact, we tried to fix it. There was a bill on the floor here which replaced the first year of these sequester cuts with a balanced mixture of revenues and expenditures. The bill was on the floor for vote, and it received enough to pass. It received more than 50 votes and more than a majority of this body. This is a way of saying we do not want there to be these nonstrategic sequester cuts. Because of the decision to filibuster, to require it to reach not a majority but 60 votes, the will of the majority in this body to turn off sequester for the first year and find a balanced replacement package was thwarted. We have another opportunity in this budget.

I will say one more thing, and then I will throw it back to the Senator with a question. We have before us a sequester alternative in the fiscal year 2014 budget we are debating. The budget includes a path of deficit reduction which is balanced and is both expense cuts and revenues. It also does something very particular with respect to sequester. It replaces blunt across-the-board nonstrategic cuts with targeted and strategic cuts of a lesser magnitude, because we are adding in revenues as well. It also times the cuts so they are not straight across-the-board equal for 10 years but a little more focused on the back end of the 10-year period to help the economy. Signs indicate the stock market, housing market, auto sales, and consumer confidence is picking up.

What this budget does with the sequester is it finds savings but reduces the deficit of savings. It makes them targeted and strategic, rather than blunt and across the board. It times them in a way which is more conducive to economic growth. This, as one of the many features of this budget, is the better approach to sequester than the one we are currently living under.

I wish to ask the Senator a question. After attending the Budget Committee hearings with me and hearing the debate on the floor thus far about the budget, I have to say I have been a little surprised to hear some of my colleagues. They argue: No, we shouldn't replace sequester. The sequester should go forward. The sequester is a good thing.

I heard this argued in committee. There was opposition to the notion of doing something better than sequester. It was sort of expressed as we said we were going to do the sequester cuts and we need to do them. I have heard it said on the floor, even in the course of the debate since yesterday. Under any circumstances, as somebody who has created and run businesses, who ran a State government and received fiscal accolades for doing it the right way, if we have a reasonable fix, is there any justification for continuing with blunt across-the-board sequester cuts which do not take into account the priority of any of the line items and do not take into account the performance data about whether any of those line items are affected? I would like to hear the Senator address that question.

I know our colleague from Hawaii is also anxious to tell us about sequester effects in her State.

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Warner.

I do want to pick up on one of the last points he made, which is the balanced way of getting to where we all want to go. We want to have a growing economy with a lowering unemployment rate. We want to deal with our deficit. These are challenging, complex goals that are not easy, but we can get there. Even the action of this body last night in passing the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill and fix shows we can cooperate together and with the House get there. It is my hope that will inspire us going forward.

The question is this: All agree that what has been done thus far in the area of deficit reduction equates to about $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction that has been done by the last Congress, including the deal on the Bush tax cuts that were made at yearend, $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years. And all in looking at that deficit reduction also agree that $1.85 trillion of the deficit reduction was cutting expenses and a little bit more than $600 billion of it was revenues that were achieved through the yearend Bush tax cuts deal. So overwhelmingly what has been done thus far has been in spending cuts rather than new revenues. It is very important for us to know that. It is very important for folks to realize that Democrats are willing to make hard calls about spending, and we have done it already.

But the question before this body and the question before the House now is, going forward, what do we do to achieve additional deficit reduction that is consistent with having a growing economy? The approaches of the Senate and the House on this could not be more different.

The House approach basically says all additional deficit reduction should be achieved by cutting spending, by looking at one side of the balance sheet. I do not know of a business, I do not know of a family, I do not know of other units of government that, as they are trying to wrestle with this question, confine themselves only looking at one side of the balance sheet. But that is what the House budget does.

I was thinking about this approach and this question about deficits not long ago, and it struck me that when I look at myself in a mirror, I always wish I was thinner, but I have never once looked in a mirror and wished I was weaker. An all-cuts approach is like looking in a mirror and wishing you were weaker because an all-cuts approach makes you weaker. It makes you weaker in defense, it makes you weaker in education, it makes you weaker in infrastructure.

By laying people off in jobs, it makes you weaker because your unemployment rate is higher. An all-cuts approach is like looking in the mirror and wishing you were weaker.

I don't want to be weaker. I don't want this Nation to be weaker. We have to be stronger. Can we make cuts? Sure, we can. We have, and we will make more. But we ought to be focused on being stronger, about growing the economy and growing jobs.

That is why the approach the Senate takes is the right approach; because by utilizing revenues appropriately, reforming tax expenditures to reduce them on the equivalent of about 7 or 8 percent a year, these myriad of tax expenditures in the Tax Code, we are able to find investments in infrastructure and soften the indiscriminate cuts that are leading to the job losses that my friend from Hawaii described.

The Senate budget, in achieving additional deficit reduction, is a balanced approach that will make us stronger, not weaker. That is why it is my great hope that we will pass this in a significant way.

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