Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am offering a bipartisan amendment which prohibits the furlough of civilian employees while funds remain in the defense working capital fund. The services provided by working capital fund employees are already fully funded apart from the appropriations process. In fact, imposing furloughs actually costs the taxpayers more through delayed production, overhead increases, and the need for overtime or the transfer of workload to more expensive sources of work. The amendment will prevent that from happening again as it did in 2013.

If working capital fund employees are furloughed, as they were in the last government shutdown, there will be no direct savings. Indeed, it will actually cost the taxpayers more money.

The furloughs delay production, increase the overhead, and in some cases transfer workload to more expensive sources of work. Indeed, senior military officials have expressed publicly that working capital fund employees, such as depot and shipyard workers, should be considered for exemption from furloughs because the furloughs actually hurt readiness and increase costs associated with production delays.

It is important to note that under this provision, DOD still has the authority to furlough working capital fund employees for disciplinary purposes. Further, working capital fund employees could be furloughed if funded workload dried up due to budget cuts or downsizing. Therefore, ending the threat of furloughs for these employees will save money, improve military readiness, and prevent needless delays and cost overruns from work that has already been funded.

I urge the support of the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Chairman, I just want to quickly respond to my friend. I share many of his sentiments. I certainly don't like to see anybody furloughed. I was not in favor of previous government shutdowns. I thought they were quite counterproductive.

This is, however, a unique case. The funds are already in existence. There is no savings. We are literally taking people out of work when we have funds set aside outside the appropriations process for them to continue their work. So in this case they really deserve to be excepted if we happen to make a mistake and stumble into a process like this again.

Again, I don't disagree with my friend's sentiments about the larger workforce. I have never found these things to be particularly productive. Indeed, as I recall, in every case we have always gone back and made everybody whole, so really the ultimate loser has usually been the taxpayer because we paid for work, created uncertainty that our Federal employees didn't deserve, but ultimately compensated them.

In this case, the funds are available. We should just keep people at work. They are doing an important job for the national security. So again, I would urge the passage of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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