Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. SIMPSON. I thank the chairman. I appreciate him yielding.

Madam Speaker, I have to tell you that I agree with the statement of my good friend from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky). In fact, most people sitting on the Floor are on the Appropriations Committee and agree with him that we need to get back to regular order. I can tell you that our chairman and the ranking member have been trying to get us back to regular order where we pass individual appropriations bills and get them done. So far we haven't been able to do that, so it's necessary to do a short-term CR.

I can tell you that we've heard over the last couple of days a lot of talk about Republicans trying to shut down the government. That's the last thing we want to do. If we wanted to do that, we wouldn't be doing a short-term CR. The reason we're doing a short-term CR instead of a long-term CR is because we need to allow the Appropriations Committee to do their work--to finish their bills, to work with the Senate and get conference reports done, and do our individual bills. And that's what we're working on.

We can't fall into the abyss of a long-term CR. I will give you an example. As many of you know, the West has been on fire this summer--in fact, our chairman was out in Idaho reducing the number of fish in our streams out there this summer. He saw the effects of the fires and what it's having in Idaho and throughout the West. We were able to get into this short-term CR 636 million additional dollars to fund the Forest Service and the BLM in forest firefighting costs. If we do a long-term CR, we lose that $636 million. If we do individual bills, we will be able to keep it.

But we need to get to where we do individual appropriations bills so that we can have our priorities met. Some people think doing a long-term CR actually reduces spending. I will tell you that if you look at where we were last year--with our bills that we almost got done and then ended up with a long-term CR--the EPA is spending about $75 million more dollars this year than it would have under the bills that we would have passed. So if you think that's the way to save money, it's not. We need to do our job.

While I was talking about forest firefighting service, I have to tell you, since I've got the floor for a minute, how proud I am of the work that the Forest Service did, the contractors with the Forest Service, with hotshot crews from across the country. I met with some of them from Tennessee--I knew they were from Tennessee because they spoke funny. But they did an amazing, amazing job. We ought to be proud of the work they do, and we ought to make sure they have the resources to fight these wildfires.

Let's pass this short-term CR, keep the government operating, and let Appropriations finish their job.

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