Drug Quality and Security Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Madam President, it is clear we have honest disagreements about how we should address our budget. I believe the path forward should be fair and balanced. That is not what we have seen to date. We have enacted $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction, with $1.8 trillion coming from spending cuts. These cuts put tremendous pressure on important domestic investments in areas such as education, health care, and national security.

I do not believe cutting domestic programs that invest in our future and help low- and middle-income American families is the right thing to do, especially when we can close egregious tax loopholes that benefit multinational corporations and some of the wealthiest Americans.

Again, we have made significant progress in deficit reduction. The bulk of that has been cutting programs that invest in the country and help families. To go forward, we need a balanced approach, selective cuts, but we also need to close some of these egregious loopholes that are benefiting--not the small business man or woman living in Rhode Island--but multinational corporations--not working wage earners in Rhode Island--but some of the wealthiest Americans.

I know some of my colleagues disagree with me. But in order to address our long-term fiscal challenges, the brinkmanship has to stop. Drawing lines in the sand and daring people to cross them has to stop. What we need is not to surrender our principles but to reach principled compromise.

That is why we should provide immediate certainty that the shutdowns and the threats to wreck the economy are totally off the table. We can do this by agreeing to adequate top-line numbers for the appropriations process for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 and eliminating the job-killing sequester.

Then we can move forward to a long-term debate about our fiscal challenges. We can then build consensus and reach this principled compromise. In reaching that compromise, I would urge my colleagues to include policies that focus on jobs and economic growth, that restore fairness to our Tax Code and preserve hard-earned Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Looking over the last few years, the uncertainty and the brinkmanship according to most economists has robbed us of growth. That growth, in and of itself, not only would have put more Americans to work, but it would have contributed to deficit reduction, even more than we have already been able to do to date.

If we are serious about deficit reduction, if we are serious about narrowing the gap in terms of equality in our society, then we have to emphasize not only wise fiscal policies that reduce the deficit directly but wise fiscal policies that encourage growth and also reduce the deficit.

Let's agree to those top-line numbers. Let's also eliminate the sequester and let's move forward. That is why we were sent here. Americans want us to keep the economy moving forward and to get the economy working for them. They do not want to see us engage in procedural maneuvers that simply leave us without adequate progress on these issues that are extraordinarily important to them.

We are recovering from the most recent self-inflicted wound--the government shutdown and near default. That manufactured crisis was absolutely unnecessary and it was particularly unnecessary to threaten the credit of the United States. A vast majority of Americans are clear that at a minimum we should keep the government open and we should pay our bills. We have always done that. Only in the last few years and harking back to when Mr. Gingrich was Speaker did the other side engage in this sort of brinksmanship.

This does not work for Americans. They do understand we have differences in policy. They do understand we have to debate these various differences. But at a threshold level, government has to be working for them, not sporadically but constantly. And we cannot threaten the credit of the United States.

Jumping from these manufactured crises to crises is no way to do the job. As I said before, there are immediate tasks before us. We have to have a reasonable expenditure level for our budgets for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. Sequester must stop. Then we have to start to look at longer term problems that are being driven by demographics.

We know the sequestration is harming our job growth. CBO has estimated that the 2013 and 2014 sequester will cost the economy 900,000 jobs. Simply suspending or limiting the sequester, if we can generate 900,000 jobs, most Americans would say that is the right policy. If you can just do that and create jobs, then do it.

It is obvious the sequester is not workable. The House of Representatives, our colleagues, have had very difficult times passing bills that adhere to sequestration, bills that traditionally passed overwhelmingly, like transportation and infrastructure bills. If we cannot even do that under the pressure of the sequester, then, again, we are back to a dysfunctional government. It might be formally open, but it is not helping people and it's not doing the things we have to do: getting economies to grow, letting States build bridges, sewers, and highways.

Senator Mikulski has done an extraordinary job as the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. She has been working hard to make sure we bring bills to this floor that not only have the support of our Members, our colleagues, but also meet the needs of the American people.

I have the privilege of chairing the interior subcommittee. We have been able, working with my colleague Senator Murkowski from Alaska, to propose--we have not brought it to the subcommittee or full committee--but to propose a mark that would respond to the real needs of this country in terms of clean water and drinking water infrastructure--which is vital to the economy of every American community.

On the other side, the House is proposing a cut of $1.756 billion, more than 75 percent. That cut would devastate these programs and result in 97,000 fewer jobs. These are the good kinds of construction jobs, high-paying jobs, that allow families to stay above the water and allow communities to prosper. The workers who are putting in those infrastructure projects are also going to local supermarkets, local restaurants, paying the fees and dues to the Little League teams, and doing the things we expect every family should be able to do and we hope every family can do.

In the Transportation bill, for example, we were able to maintain our promise to fund transit, airport, and highway systems. We have been able to set aside more than $1 billion for the popular TIGER grant program and a new initiative to replace bridges in critical transportation corridors. This is an effort that can benefit every State in this country in terms of infrastructure projects.

Looking across the Capitol at the House Republican Transportation bill, they are cutting by $7.7 billion--even more than last year's sequestration level. It not only eliminates the TIGER grants for 2014, it reaches back to 2013 TIGER grants and cuts them by $237 million. These kinds of cuts are untenable.

They also signal a very different attitude here. It was at one time clear that transportation was one of those issues that united us, Republicans and Democrats, the North, the South, the East, and the West, because it was something that every community needed and every community understood. Now we see this dichotomy, and that is unhealthy for our government and for our economy.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers said last July when these draconian cuts forced House leaders to pull the bill from consideration:

With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted just three months ago. Thus, I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration--and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts--must be brought to an end.

Even the chairperson of the House Appropriations Committee is signaling that sequestration is untenable and unworkable.

On this side of the Capitol, Chairman Mikulski has been a strong voice echoing--not only echoing, but asserting--that position constantly.

We can't get rid of sequestration with spending cuts alone. We can't cut our way to prosperity. Revenue has to be part of the solution.

In fact, as we have done over the last several years, we have cut discretionary spending dramatically. We are down to not fat but bone, and so we need additional revenues.

There is some good news. There are loopholes, egregious loopholes, that in and of themselves should be closed, regardless if we were dealing with the issues of deficit and sequestration. They are not appropriate, not efficient, and they do not add to the overall economic benefit of the country. They do benefit very narrow interests. It comes down to whether my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are willing to see these special preferences prevail or whether the national economy and the families across this country will benefit.

We have to move forward. We have to emphasize things that will help us, for example, create more manufacturing jobs in this time and for the future. I think at one point we thought manufacturing was passé. We discovered it is not only not passé but it is absolutely vital, because we can't take new innovation, new discoveries, at which we are so good, commercialize them, and then create new products in that commercialization process, unless we have manufacturing.

We learn a lot on the manufacturing floor. We have seen products we have developed intellectually become not only manufactured but improved by other countries who have the ability to manufacture, we have to get back to doing that.

We have to be able to align our workforce and our education system so that we have the skills for the next century. Job training has to be competent, efficient, and adequate. All of this requires investments in resources, not simply cutting away and cutting away.

Ultimately, as we understand, and as our predecessors, particularly my predecessor, Senator Claiborne Pell, understood, education is the engine that pulls this country forward. We used to assume we were the most educated. We were the country with the best record of college graduates. We were the country that advanced public education for everyone. We look around the world and we have slipped in terms of college graduates. We have slipped in terms of skills. Our public education system needs to be reinvigorated. Not only with suggestions from the sidelines, not only with new approaches, but also with real resources. These investments have to be made.

It is a multifaceted approach, but I think we have to begin with only the simple understanding, as we go forward, we need to provide the economy, our constituents, and ourselves the certainty of an adequate funding level for the government for the next 2 years. We need to suspend, dispense with, postpone--whatever the appropriate term--sequestration, because it is not going to help us grow the economy. In fact, it will take away about 900,000 jobs.

Then we have to certainly make it clear we will not threaten the creditworthiness of the United States by defaulting on our debt.

If we can do these things, and I believe we can, we can provide the certainty that our private entrepreneurs need to make real investments in the economy and to grow. In all of this, we have to bring a balanced approach. It is not only cutting, it is expenditure cuts wisely chosen, together with revenue wisely chosen, through closing loopholes that will give us a growing economy, hopefully increase opportunity, and put us back on the path to profound sustained economic recovery.

(The further remarks of Mr. REED are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. REED. I yield the floor.

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