Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would like to start by commending my friend and colleague, Chairman Ryan, for working on this bipartisan agreement. I also want to congratulate our Senate colleague, Senator Patty Murray, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, for her efforts to get this done, along with many of our colleagues.
This agreement is far from perfect. It is not the budget agreement I or many of my colleagues would have written, but I do believe that, on balance, at the margin, it represents a small but positive step forward.
Mr. Speaker, I would not have been able to say that as recently as this past Monday and early Tuesday, but as a result of changes made, I think this is a positive step forward; and I want to commend my fellow conferees on the House side--Mr. Clyburn and Mrs. Lowey--as well as the efforts of Leader Pelosi, to make the changes necessary.
As a result of those changes, this is an agreement that many of our colleagues can now support, and that is for many reasons; but most of all, it results in a situation in which we will avoid the very deep and harmful cuts from the sequester, which, if this Congress does not act, will automatically take effect a few weeks from now. Those very deep and unproductive across-the-board cuts will create an unnecessary drag on the economy at a time when economic growth is building but still not nearly where it is. It will have a negative impact on job growth, and it will eat away at important national priorities and investments.
As a result of this agreement, in fiscal year 2014, we will be able to invest $25 billion more in vital national areas than we were in fiscal year 2013. Of those $25 billion investments, $22.5 billion will be in important areas of domestic investment: in areas of education, in areas of important scientific research like medical research at the National Institutes of Health. It will also provide, as Chairman Ryan has said, some certainty, which is very important at this point in time; and without this agreement, you would be guaranteed additional furloughs of Federal employees in the coming year, so I think it is a positive step forward.
I do, Mr. Speaker, want to express my extreme disappointment in one area. In the agreement, itself, as Chairman Ryan has acknowledged and as Senator Murray has recognized, we decided not to include what we call the doc fix and decided we would not include the unemployment insurance compensation extension. Many of us argued that we should include both of those in this agreement. In fact, House Democrats proposed an agreement along those lines. We believe that, if we are going to do the doc fix, which we think is important--making sure that doctors who provide services to Medicare patients are fully compensated--we should also make sure that individuals who are on long-term unemployment will not be left out in the cold 3 days after Christmas. It was decided that those elements would not be in the agreement, itself.
Yet, last night, at the 11th hour, the House Republican majority decided to insert the doc fix within this agreement. We support that doc fix, but we are very troubled that we have not even been allowed a vote to extend unemployment compensation.
The reality, Mr. Speaker, is, even without that, if we leave here without this agreement, we are not going to get the extension of unemployment insurance because the Speaker won't allow us to have a vote on that, so the only thing we would accomplish by defeating this budget agreement would be to go home with a lot of uncertainty and with the sequester guaranteed to hit in January. That is not a good result. This agreement is a better result. I will talk a little bit later about what we believe we should be doing in this Congress.
As the chairman said, this agreement doesn't match his vision nor does it match ours. We put forward a proposal that would focus a lot more on job creation, to try and invest more in our national infrastructure--in our roads and in our bridges and in our broadband--so that we can put people back to work right now and accomplish important national priorities. We believe we should be focusing on early education, investing more in our future so we have job growth not only now from additional investments but so we ensure greater job growth in the future. There are other things that we think were important and part of this agreement which are not in here but that we will continue to fight for in the days ahead.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
I think this agreement is an acknowledgement--at least a majority on both sides, certainly on the Democratic side, a strong majority--that the sequester is a dumb and unproductive way to cut spending or to reduce the deficit.
What this agreement does is prevent that full sequester from taking place over the next 2 years. We believe that we should address and substitute the remaining sequester through a balanced approach of additional targeted cuts. But, Mr. Speaker, we also think we should close some of these special interest tax loopholes that benefit nobody except certain narrow interests that sometimes have undue sway here in the Congress.
But as my colleague said, we have different approaches, and our Republican colleagues have refused to close a single one of those special tax breaks or preferences for the purpose either of reducing the sequester or reducing the deficit. So we have different approaches. We wouldn't have chosen the offsets that are in here to pay for the sequester replacement. They are the result of a negotiation. As I said earlier, I believe on balance this is an important step forward.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), one of the people who was very important in this process, my good friend and colleague from New York, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and one of the conferees.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to emphasize a point that we both made, which is that if we had our druthers, we would have approached this issue differently.
I do want to say with respect to some of the offsets, there are many of us who would have preferred to see the closures of many special interest tax breaks as part of the offsets in this legislation. We hope that as we go forward, we would agree that that is also a kind of wasteful spending in the Tax Code. If you give a special interest in this country some tax preference not enjoyed by others, you are simply raising the burden on everybody else. It is simply a form of spending through the Tax Code.
Mr. Speaker, as we address these issues going forward, whether it is replacing the sequester or reducing the deficit, as part of a balanced approach, we think we should take those into account as well.
We also proposed, as part of this measure, applying some of the excessive subsidies that we give to agribusinesses as part of the offsets, and our colleagues rejected those.
As has been said, this is a product of compromise, but I do want to let people know that it has been our preference to close some of those special interest tax breaks and use some of those excessive agriculture subsidies as offsets here rather than some of the provisions that are before us.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer is right. This agreement does not address the comprehensive issues that we need to address. We need to address those in a balanced way, and that means working on both additional, smart, targeted spending cuts, but also closing special interest tax breaks.
But what this agreement does do is make sure that, in the next several weeks, we do not move to a full sequester, very deep across-the-board cuts, which will hurt the economy. Instead, it provides more room to invest in vital areas like education and research. That is a positive note. That is a positive bipartisan note.
I do want to say, Mr. Speaker, however, and this is not as a result of anything the chairman of the Budget Committee does, there is also a sour note in leaving here without having addressed the unemployment insurance.
This agreement didn't include the doc-fix, and it didn't include unemployment insurance. We should be dealing with both those issues together. We are only dealing with one of them now.
So I hope, as we go forward, we will address those issues; and we should not leave town until we address the unemployment issue.
But let's, at the same time, take this small positive step forward.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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