Workforce Investment Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed--Resumed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, through the past few years in Congress we have lurched from one budget crisis to another, from one fiscal cliff to the next. When one countdown clock stopped, it wasn't too long before the next one got started.

The uncertainty was devastating to our very fragile economic recovery. The constant crisis cost us billions of dollars in lost growth and jobs, and the continued across-the-board cuts from sequestration were hurting our families and our communities and cutting off critical investments in economic growth and national security programs.

After the completely unnecessary government shutdown and debt limit crisis just 2 months ago, the American people were more disgusted than ever at the gridlock and the dysfunction. They were sick of partisanship, sick of showboating and saber rattling. They were tired of turning on their televisions at night and seeing elected officials saying: It is my way or the highway, and they had no more patience for politicians holding the economy and the Federal Government hostage to extract concessions or score political points.

So when the government was finally reopened and the debt limit crisis averted, people across the country were hoping Democrats and Republicans could finally get in a room, make some compromises, and take a step away from the constant crises. That is why I was so glad that part of that crisis-ending deal was creating the budget conference that many of us on both sides of the aisle had been trying to start since the Senate and House passed our budgets 7 months earlier.

The budget conference began at a time when distress between Democrats and Republicans could not have been higher. We had just 2 months to get a deal to avoid lurching toward another crisis, and most people assumed there was no way the divide could be bridged. But Chairman Ryan and I got together and we started talking and we decided that instead of trying to solve everything at once, the most important thing we could do for the families we represented was to end the uncertainty and start rebuilding some trust. We weren't going to spend the next 8 weeks sniping at each other from our partisan corners, we were not going to use what was said in the room to launch political attacks on the other, and we weren't going to try to tackle the larger challenges we both know are critical but aren't going to be solved right now. So we focused on what was attainable. We worked together to find common ground, and we looked for ways we could compromise and take some steps toward the other. We both thought the least we should be able to do is to find a way to replace some of the across-the-board cuts from sequestration and agree on a spending level for the short term so we could avoid another crisis.

I know some of our colleagues want to keep the sequester caps. But Democrats and many Republicans believe it makes sense to replace these meat-ax cuts with smarter and more balanced savings.

We spent 7 weeks working on this. I worked very closely with the House Budget Committee's ranking member Chris Van Hollen as well as my colleagues in the Senate on and off the Budget Committee, and I am very proud that last week Chairman Ryan and I reached an agreement on the bipartisan Budget Act of 2013.

This bill passed the House of Representatives Thursday on a vote of 332 to 94, with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans. I come to the floor to urge my colleagues to support this bill in the Senate and send it to the President so it can be signed into law.

The bipartisan Budget Act puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back sequestration's harmful cuts to education, medical research, infrastructure investments, and defense jobs for the next 2 years. If we didn't get a deal, we would have faced another continuing resolution that would have locked in the automatic cuts or, worse, a potential government shutdown in just a few short weeks.

Over the past year, I have heard from so many people across my home State of Washington who have told me sequestration has hurt their families, businesses, and communities--from the parents of children whose Head Start Programs were shut down and seniors wondering whether Meals On Wheels would continue, the scientists and doctors whose investments in cutting-edge research and medical cures were cut off or threatened, the construction workers who lost their jobs when projects were put on hold, small business owners whose revenues were declining due to the cuts and uncertainty, and so many more. For them, the cuts from sequestration were senseless. They were real, they were hurting, and they were only going to get worse. So I am very proud that our bill replaces almost two-thirds of this year's sequester cuts to domestic discretionary investments.

This will not solve every problem sequestration has caused, but it is a step in the right direction and a dramatic improvement over the status quo.

Over the past year I have talked to workers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Fairchild Air Force Base and elsewhere who have been very much impacted by the sequestration and very worried about how another round of cuts would affect their jobs and families. I have heard from military leaders who told me sequestration would impact our national security if it continued and from companies that do business with the Defense Department that the uncertainty and the cuts were hurting their ability to hire workers and invest in future growth. So I am very glad this bill will prevent the upcoming round of defense sequestration and provide some certainty to the Pentagon for the upcoming years.

Secretary of Defense Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey have both expressed support for this bill, as have a number of colleagues in Congress who have spent the last few years highlighting the impact of continued sequestration on national security and defense workers.

The increased investments we get from rolling back sequestration over the next 2 years are fully replaced with a smarter, balanced mix of new revenue and more responsible spending cuts. Experts and economists have said the responsible thing to do is increase investments now while our economic recovery remains fragile and workers are still fighting to get back on the job, while tackling our deficit and debt over the long run. This bill moves us in the direction of exactly that.

We have cut our deficit in half over the past few years, and this bill adds to the $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction done since 2011 with an additional $23 billion in savings over the next 10 years.

This bill is not exactly what I would have written on my own. I am pretty sure it is not what Chairman Ryan would have written on his own.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. BOOKER). Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mrs. MURRAY. This bill is a compromise, and that means neither side got everything they wanted and both of us had to give a bit.

I was very disappointed we were not able to close a single wasteful tax loophole that benefits the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. I had hoped to extend critical support for workers who are fighting to get back on the job. I was very disappointed that Republicans refused to allow that to be part of this deal. I certainly would have liked to have replaced more of sequestration. I know it was difficult for many Republicans to accept any increases in the BCA caps at all.

I know many Republicans had hoped this would be an opportunity to make the kind of Medicare and Social Security benefit cuts they have advocated in the past, but I fought hard to keep them out.

This deal is a compromise. It doesn't tackle every one of the challenges we face as a nation, but that was never our goal. This bipartisan bill takes the first steps toward rebuilding our broken budget process and hopefully toward rebuilding our broken Congress.

We have spent far too long here scrambling to fix artificial crises instead of working together to solve the big problems we all know we need to address. We have budget deficits that have improved but have not disappeared, and we have deficits in education, innovation, and infrastructure that continue to widen. There is so much more we need to do to create jobs, boost our economy, replace the remaining years of sequestration, and tackle our long-term fiscal challenges fairly and responsibly.

I am hopeful that this deal can be just the first of many bipartisan deals, that it can rebuild some of the trust, bring Democrats and Republicans together, and demonstrate that government can work for the people we all represent.

I urge my colleagues to support the bipartisan Budget Act of 2013.

I thank Chairman Ryan for his work with me over the last several months. I thank a number of Members who have worked very closely with us, including Ranking Member Van Hollen and every Member of our Budget Committee here in the Senate who worked hard to pass a budget, start a conference, and get a bipartisan deal.

When we come back next year, I will be ready to get to work with Chairman Ryan or anyone else from either side of this aisle who wants to build on this bipartisan foundation to continue addressing our Nation's challenges fairly and responsibly. It is not going to be easy, but the American people are expecting nothing less.

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