Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, earlier this year, a man named William, who is from Gig Harbor, WA, wrote to me to express his frustration with what he saw happening here in Congress. William served in the Navy. He now works for a tech company that supports Navy communications in the Pacific Northwest.
Like so many Americans in recent years, he has witnessed hiring freezes and cutbacks and furloughs and layoffs. He said a couple of years ago he was hoping for a promotion, but now he considers himself just lucky to have a job. He is not even sure how long he can count on that.
Well, William is not alone. The partisanship and the gridlock here in Washington, DC, have been devastating for families such as his in my home State of Washington and across the country.
The government shutdown and the debt limit brinkmanship last month were just the latest examples. But Congress has been lurching from crisis to crisis to crisis for years and it has got to end. So today I am going to share a few stories from families who have been paying the price for the dysfunction here in Congress. I have worked very hard to make sure that voices such as theirs are heard loudly and clearly in the budget process. I am going to keep fighting to make sure their interests are represented every day as we work now toward a balanced and bipartisan budget agreement.
Seven months ago the House and the Senate each passed their budget. The Senate budget that we passed here was built on three principles. First of all, our highest priority was investing in jobs and economic growth and prosperity that is built from the middle out, not from the top down.
Secondly, the deficit has been now cut in half and we built on the $2 1/2 trillion in deficit reduction we have passed now since 2011 to continue to tackle this challenge fairly and responsibly.
Third, our budget keeps the promises that we have made to our seniors and our families and our communities.
The budget that passed the House reflects different values and priorities. But it was our job to get in a room, make some compromises with them, and find a way to bring those two budgets together. Although I had hoped we could start this bipartisan budget negotiation far sooner and avoided last month's crisis, the budget conference has now begun--started last week--and offers us now the opportunity to break this cycle of gridlock and dysfunction and start moving our country back in the right direction. We have a chance now to turn our attention back to where it belongs, strengthening our economy and creating jobs, continue making responsible spending cuts while closing wasteful tax loopholes that are used by the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, and to finally show the American people that Congress can work together. We can compromise and alleviate the uncertainty and the pain that families across the country are facing.
The effect of these years of gridlock is clear in places such as the Denise Louie Education Center in Seattle. I visited that Head Start Program earlier this year where pre-K students from low-income families can learn their ABCs and take part in story time and benefit from health and nutrition programs. Even before the major cuts to Head Start that took effect last month, that center had a waiting list. Now the director of the school has had to drop kids from that program because of these tight budget constraints.
They are far from alone. Another Head Start in Everett, WA, a program that has served needy kids since the 1970s, had to completely shut its doors this summer because Congress could not work together. That one facility alone was helping 40 kids prepare for kindergarten. Nationwide, these cuts have forced tens of thousands of children out of Head Start as well.
That is not all. The senseless cuts for sequestration have impacted education programs all across the country. Researchers and scientists who are working on cures for cancer and other diseases have lost their jobs. Programs such as Meals on Wheels that deliver food to seniors have been cut.
There is so much more. The ripples from the so-called sequester have been felt in our homes and in our businesses and across our fragile economy.
The across-the-board cuts have also had, of course, serious impact on defense programs and workers. Earlier this year I heard from one of my constituents whose family was impacted by this very directly. His name is Bob. He is from Bremerton, WA, and is an engineer at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. He told me every day highly skilled employees come into his office, often in tears, and tell him they do not know how they are going to manage to make ends meet if they are furloughed or laid off. They are worried now. They have felt the pain for months. They know it could get worse. Because if these automatic cuts are not replaced in a bipartisan deal, another $20 billion is scheduled to be cut from defense spending in January, just a few short months from now. That would make more furloughs and layoffs much more likely. It would mean continued and deeper cuts to combat training.
It does not have to be this way, because something both Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the very least this budget conference should be able to accomplish, at an absolute minimum, is finding a path to replace these terrible sequester cuts and set a budget level for at least the short term.
Republican Congressman Hal Rogers, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, said, ``Sequestration--and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts--must be brought to an end.''
Even House Speaker John Boehner said the cuts would ``hollow out'' our military.
Just recently the House Armed Service Committee Republicans sent me and Chairman Ryan a letter urging us to replace the sequester, saying it was ``never intended to be policy.''
That is exactly right. Sequester was intended to be so bad it would drive both sides to the table to be willing to make some compromises, to replace it with smarter savings. I am very glad that more and more of our colleagues from both sides of the aisle are stepping up to try and find a solution. So the question now is not whether we should replace the across-the-board sequester cuts, but how we do it.
The House and the Senate budgets both deal with sequester, just in different ways. The House budget fully replaces the defense cuts and lifts the BCA cap. It pays for that by cutting even more deeply into key domestic investments. Our Senate budget, on the other hand, replaces all of the automatic cuts and pays for it with an equal mix of responsible spending cuts and revenue that we raise by closing wasteful tax loopholes.
Finding a bipartisan solution will not be easy. We all know that. It will require compromise from both sides. As I mentioned at our first budget committee conference last week, I am going into this process ready to offer some tough spending cuts that, unlike the sequester caps that disappear in 2022, would be permanently locked into law. I know there are many Republicans who would be very interested in swapping some of the inefficient and damaging cuts in the sequester with structural changes to programs that would save many multiples of the cuts to be replaced in the coming decades.
In short, I am willing to compromise. I am ready to listen to Republican ideas, as long as their proposals are fair for seniors and families. I am prepared to make some tough concessions to get this deal done. But I cannot negotiate by myself. Compromise has to run both ways. That means in addition to the responsible spending cuts, Republicans need to work with us to close wasteful tax loopholes and special-interest subsidies, because it would be unfair and unacceptable to put the entire burden of deficit reduction on the backs of our seniors and our families. It should not be difficult for Republicans to agree to put just a few of the most egregious, wasteful loopholes and special-interest carveouts on the table to get a balanced and bipartisan deal.
If the choice is between closing a wasteful loophole and lurching to another crisis, I hope every one of my colleagues will put their constituents before special interests. Over the last few years people across the country have lost a great deal of confidence in Congress's ability to work together for the good of our Nation, people such as Naani King, who, as the New York Times recently reported, serves as a registered nurse at Madigan Army Medical Center in my home State of Washington. During the shutdown last month, she worked without pay. Without a paycheck, she had to dip into her retirement account to make her monthly mortgage payment. Now, even though the shutdown is over, her family cannot take any chances. She told the Times, ``We just have too much to lose.''
We here in Congress owe it to her family and to families all over this country to work to find a path forward. So let's put an end to this gridlock. Let's put an end to these crises. Let's show the American people we are listening to them. In fact, let's show them that their stories are more important than sticking to party lines or staying in ideological corners.
We have got to rebuild some trust and we can do that. We need to find a path to compromise. We need to work together to strengthen our economy and create jobs. I am ready to do that in this budget conference. I am hopeful that over the coming weeks every one of my colleagues on that committee will make it clear that they are as well.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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