Providing for Consideration of H.R. 273, Elimination of 2013 Pay Adjustment, and for Other Purposes
by Representative James P. McGovernPosted on 2013-02-14
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McGOVERN. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, let me urge my colleagues, Democrats and
Republicans alike, to vote against this closed rule. This is a closed
rule by which the entire process has been shut down. The committees of
jurisdiction held no hearings. There was no markup. It came to the
Rules Committee. What did the Rules Committee do? They shut it down.
They shut out all possibilities for Democrats or Republicans to offer
amendments. My friend from Georgia is proud to defend this closed, iron
fist policy, but I think it's wrong, especially on a bill like this,
number one.
Number two, this is a rotten thing to do to Federal employees. It
really is. I mean, these are hardworking men and women. These are
people who work at NIH, who try to find cures for diseases that, by the
way, will not only improve the quality of life for our people but will
save money. This is about denying a pay increase to DEA agents on the
borders and to the CIA agents who tracked down Osama bin Laden. This is
a rotten, rotten thing to do. And for what? To score some cheap
political points.
I'm a little confused. My friend from Georgia says it's really not a
cut, that we're not reducing the deficit at all. The gentleman from
Texas said we need to save the American taxpayers money. The bottom
line is that this is a cheap political stunt. The victims here are
working people, and none of us should be surprised, because this is the
Republican kind of signature issue: go after working people. Do you
want to find ways to balance the budget? Punish working people. Do you
want to find this or that? Go after working people. Enough. Enough of
this war against working families in this country.
Mr. Speaker, what is also really frustrating is that here we are
debating a bill that's really going nowhere, that's about a press
release. The Republicans are going to go on vacation tomorrow. We're
not going to be back for a week, and then we'll have 4 legislative days
left to deal with this thing called ``sequestration.'' On March 1, all
of these across-the-board cuts go into play. And guess what? We're
going to lose at least 750,000 jobs. That's not my estimate. That's
what the head of OMB says. There will be 750,000 Americans unemployed
because of their inaction. Guess what? What are these people going to
do? They're going to have to look for employment. They're going to be
without work. It's going to slow down our economic growth. Give me a
break. There should be some urgency here.
My Republican friends, instead of bringing this to the floor, you
ought to be finding ways to avoid this fiscal sequestration cliff that
we're about to go over.
When my friends talk about the deficit and the debt, they don't talk
about unpaid-for war costs, and they don't talk about all the money
that they don't pay for that's sent over to Baghdad and Kabul. Instead,
we have fights on the floor of whether or not to provide emergency
hurricane relief aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy in our own
country. Only about 48 of my Republican friends voted for that. I mean,
that's where their priorities are. We should be trying to put the
American people first.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe of Texas). The time of the gentleman
has expired.
