Government Furloughs

Floor Speech

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.

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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