Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance the calls made by our colleagues today to end the disastrous spending cuts known as sequestration, to put a stop to the proposed…
Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to repeat and enhance the calls made by our colleagues today to end the disastrous spending cuts known as sequestration, to put a stop to the proposed disastrous cuts to SNAP benefits, and to urge the majority to abandon their plans to force the closure of the government and to default on the national debt.
I want to start with SNAP. Mr. Speaker, while nearly 50 million Americans struggle to put food on their tables, the majority are doubling their cuts to basic food aid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, which primarily helps children, seniors, and the disabled.
Mr. Speaker, 92 percent of the people who are on SNAP are children, the elderly, disabled, or already working. Food stamp recipients currently receive just $1.40 per meal. SNAP is a vital tool to prevent hunger, fight hunger, and help struggling Americans feed their families as they seek new employment, send their children to school, and get themselves back on their feet.
Slashing nearly $40 billion from SNAP, the majority bill takes the food out of the mouths of nearly 4 million Americans next year, particularly harming children, seniors, veterans, and Americans living in urban, rural, and suburban communities with chronically high unemployment. One in five children--that is 16 million children-- struggle with hunger, a record high.
Mr. Speaker, here to address the effects of the SNAP cuts that we are talking about today is my valued and esteemed colleague from California, Representative Alan Lowenthal.
Congressman Lowenthal was elected to represent the 47th District of California after a long and distinguished career both in city politics and in the California State Assembly in Sacramento. Congressman Lowenthal serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as with me on the House Committee on Natural Resources. Congressman Lowenthal has stood up as a loud voice against cuts to the SNAP program. He has been quoted in the press as saying, ``These cuts literally take the food from the mouths of babes.''
At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lowenthal).
Mr. Lowenthal, to your point about no one would choose to take meals for 6 quarters and that no one would choose to remain on SNAP benefits, there is this myth running around that we hear all the time that people abuse SNAP benefits--that people are buying crab legs and lobster tails with their food stamps.
What is your opinion on that?
I want to thank the gentleman from California for really bringing home the point of the importance of SNAP benefits to our Nation, the validity of the program and the ridiculousness of the cuts that were passed out of the House today.
Instead of working to create jobs here at home, the majority is punishing people in America. It's pushing punishing legislation that abandons Americans who want to work but who can't find jobs. Even in communities with high unemployment, with double-digit unemployment, adults who can't find at least a half-time job under this bill would be thrown off SNAP after 3 months regardless of how high local unemployment is.
Now, this is unnecessary. SNAP currently has work requirements that can be waived by the States during times of high unemployment. Forty- six States, including almost every State with a Republican Governor, sought waivers in fiscal year '13 to provide SNAP for those looking for work--and repeatedly so over the last 10 years.
The bottom line here is that the bill that passed out of the House today on SNAP--cutting SNAP benefits close to $40 billion over the next 10 years--is radical, and it won't pass into law. The Senate will not take up such a bill. The President would never sign it. It's radical, and it's a waste of time. By imposing such draconian cuts, the majority is really derailing any chance at the enactment of a responsible new bill, critical legislation to support our Nation's farmers and ranchers, to support food security, conservation, rural communities, and the 16 million Americans whose jobs directly depend on the agriculture industry. These majority cuts are almost 10 times those in the Senate bill, and they would make any chance at a bipartisan agreement on a much-needed farm bill nearly impossible.
I want to share with you some of the statistics from my own district in northeastern Pennsylvania. I represent the 17th Congressional District. This consists of six counties. In these six counties, we have fully 39,000 households receiving SNAP benefits at this time--an incredible number of people who really rely on these benefits, who use them to alleviate hunger and to prevent the situation in which kids are going to school hungry every day. The average monthly household SNAP participation in Pennsylvania in 2011 was 815,765 people. The average monthly household SNAP participation in the United States in 2011, according to the USDA, was 21 million people in this country. In my district, over 14 percent of the households rely on SNAP benefits. These draconian cuts would go right to the heart of real people in my district.
Mr. Speaker, I want to switch gears, and I want to talk about the sequester. I want to enhance the calls by our colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus to end the disastrous spending cuts called ``sequester.''
It has been months since these across-the-board cuts have gone into effect, devastating many important programs that Americans rely on every day. The purpose, of course, of the sequestration was to create a scheme of cuts so odious that Congress would do anything possible to avoid them, that Congress would be forced to come together and agree on a responsible budget. It was like a ticking time bomb that would force the Members of this House to come together, Mr. Speaker, and arrive at a reasonable compromise on an American budget; but the time bomb went off, and sequestration went into effect.
The bottom line here is that sequestration is going to cost 750,000 American jobs because of the disaster it wreaks on the American economy. That's not my figure. That's the figure put out by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--750,000 American jobs.
The majority's effort to make sequestration a reality shows it is ready, willing, and able to take our economy backward at a time when Americans are desperate to move this Nation forward. That's just missing the point. The majority has shown a willingness to vote on a fix for the front-page news FAA flight delay problem, but it hasn't addressed the 70,000 children who would lose access to Head Start or any of the other programs that have been crippled. Programs and services that millions of Americans rely on, like Head Start and even the Federal Emergency Management Agency program, are being decimated by draconian cuts in funding.
Funding for the FEMA agency has been slashed by over $1 billion under sequester. Just as hurricane season began, cuts for the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will delay its weather satellite launch, causing an increase in cost to the program and an increased risk of inaccurate forecasts for future extreme weather. Public safety is being put at risk. It's also being put at risk as the U.S. Forest Service is facing fire season understaffed and underequipped with 500 fewer firefighters, 50 to 70 fewer fire engines, and two fewer aircraft. In fact, our transportation infrastructure in the United States is threatened by the sequester. The U.S. Department of Transportation will face $1.943 billion in total budget cuts; and Amtrak, too, was cut by $77 million under the sequester.
The services that keep us healthy are being hurt, including important mental health programs that are delivered through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which will be cut by $168 million at a time when many are looking to expand mental health services to keep our communities safer, including communities like Washington, D.C. Food safety is being compromised as the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, has to perform fewer inspections, increasing the risk of foodborne illness. Funding for NIH, the National Institutes of Health, shrunk by $1.5 billion. Remember what the NIH does. It does lifesaving medical research. Every single area of medical research in this country will be affected, including research to cure breast cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease. The cuts from NIH alone will result in a loss of more than 20,000 jobs and $3 billion in economic activity in this country. A $285 million cut from the Centers for Disease Control research compromises our ability to detect and combat disease outbreaks, to facilitate immunizations, to plan for public health emergencies, and to conduct HIV and AIDS tests.
Critical support to everything, from putting police on our streets to agents at our borders, has been jeopardized. Our Federal public defenders are being furloughed, undermining the services that the already overburdened Federal courts face and forcing courts to hire private attorneys for defendants on an ad hoc basis at as much as $125 an hour. It's being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
As for our national security, 800,000 Department of Defense civilian employees--including in my home district, where we have the Tobyhanna Army Depot--are facing 11 days of furloughs. These are families that are already struggling to make ends meet, to pay their mortgages, make their car payments, that try to put their kids through college. Eleven days of furloughs for these faithful employees of civilian defense contractors just isn't right. The Department of Defense budget was slashed by a total of $37 billion this year, hurting economic growth in this Nation, among many other consequences.
In short, these cuts are putting the ability of our government to fully perform basic government functions that we need to keep us safe at risk. There are personal consequences. I represent Carbon County, Pennsylvania, in my district. Kim Henry from Carbon County is a participant in Head Start. Head Start doesn't just educate preschool children. It also educates and helps entire families. Head Start for Kim Henry in Carbon County helped her to figure out how to deal with situations she was facing struggling as a single mother, separated from her son's father. She was having a problem with her living arrangements. She was having a problem putting meals on the table. She was having trouble communicating her needs and figuring out how to get along in life as a single mother. Head Start, through its healthy family relationship singles workshop, helped her figure these things out.
We put too much on public schools in this country. We expect teachers to solve problems that parents need to solve. Kids don't come with instruction manuals, and a lot of times people need some guidance on how to be parents. Head Start helps provide that information, and it helped Kim Henry get her life back on track and get her relationship with her child back on track so that she's going to be a responsible parent and she's going to guide her child into being a responsible adult herself.
Meals on Wheels is cut by sequester, as well, not just Head Start. By the way, Head Start in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, alone, 49 kids alone are being asked to leave Head Start in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, because of the sequester cuts. They're never going to be 3 and 4 years old again. They're never going to have a chance to replay their time that they had to be in preschool. And they're going to spend their entire academic careers playing catchup with the other kids who have preschool. You know what that means. It means that they lose confidence in themselves as they struggle to keep up with the other kids, and they question their own ability to hang in there academically and to achieve and make the most of themselves. It's a big deal that kids get preschool through Head Start. When we cut kids from Head Start because of sequester, it's being penny-wise and pound-foolish because everybody knows that statistics show that the people who do worse academically, who struggle and fail academically, are way more likely to enter the criminal justice system in one form or another. It's a truth that is proven time and time again. The way to handle this problem is nip these problems in the bud, make good students out of kids, and do it through Head Start. Let's not cut these things.
Meals on Wheels is another great American program. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, which I represent, Meals on Wheels is a very important program. It doesn't just provide meals for seniors; it also provides socialization. People are showing up at seniors' homes and talking with them and communicating with them and checking in on them.
It's not just about socialization. It's also about safety. Just recently, a Meals on Wheels volunteer in Scranton was delivering a meal to an elderly man who didn't come to his door. The volunteer was concerned, looked through the window, and saw the man lying unconscious on his floor in his home. This volunteer was able to summon help, get the man medical help, get him to the hospital, and basically save his life. Meals on Wheels isn't just about a meal, it's about communication, it's about checking up on people who don't have other people to check up on them.
Old Forge, Pennsylvania, is another town that I represent. A different Meals on Wheels volunteer in Old Forge was delivering food during winter to an elderly woman and noticed that she came to the door wearing a parka and mittens and a hat. When the volunteer inquired as to why she was wearing that, as if she had to, the woman replied that she didn't have any heat. That volunteer was able to make contact with the appropriate social service agencies, figure out how to get the heat turned back on, and the heat was turned back on. Again, a potentially dangerous situation for the elderly woman was averted. Why? Because of Meals on Wheels. It makes no sense for us to cut Meals on Wheels. The people who are suffering by these cuts are our seniors. We need to be honoring our seniors, not cutting their benefits.
Mr. Speaker, while the sequestration process has obviously already begun, it is not too late to work together to change course. On behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I say we must change course. We can't take these sequester cuts and plan on living with them ad infinitum. It makes no sense. It's the wrong solution for America.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to address on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus the question about Congress acting to avoid another shutdown showdown. Once again, a deadline looms before the United States Congress, and once again the majority is set to play politics by threatening to shut down the Federal Government rather than work toward a budget compromise. Instead of working together to develop a budget that is going to work for all Americans, the majority is letting extremists and ideologues drive the agenda.
Just last month, we marked an inauspicious anniversary: Standard & Poor's downgrading the full faith and credit of the United States of America. So we have two things going on: we have the majority trying to extract political concessions in exchange for keeping the doors of America's government open and in exchange for America not defaulting on its national debt.
Mr. Speaker, this is the United States of America. We pay our bills. We pay our bills, and we pay them on time. That's what preserves the full faith and credit of the United States, it preserves our creditworthiness, and it prevents our interest rates from skyrocketing because that is exactly what will happen if we default on the national debt. Our interest rates will go through the roof, and it will cause not an immediate recession, but an immediate depression. That is ridiculous, to hold the national debt hostage in that fashion because you're not just holding the debt ceiling hostage, you are holding the American economy and the welfare
of every single American hostage, as well. We cannot let that happen. It is the most ridiculous thing. To have that held hostage for political gain, for political ideological purposes, is simply unacceptable.
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I urge my fellow colleagues in the House to abandon this plan to hold hostage the American full faith and credit, the American creditworthiness, and the American economy on the basis that it's a good way to extract political concessions for what the ideologues in this House are after.
Mr. Speaker, instead of working together to do our jobs and resolve these critical issues, the majority are staking out a decidedly different approach from working together. In fact, Speaker Boehner has indicated that he is gearing up for ``a whale of a fight'' to push the interests of the majority's right flank ahead of the needs of the American people. In fact, Mr. Boehner has been vocal about his plans to use the need to raise that debt limit to call for cuts to the programs that we've been discussing, the programs that help American families. As Speaker Boehner said, ``I'll say this: It may be unfair, but what I'm trying to do here is to leverage the political process.''
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I say, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Back off of that extreme approach. Back off of that dangerous approach. Holding hostage the entire American Government and holding hostage the American interest rate and economy doesn't make sense. Let's work together and figure out our problems in a responsible, reasonable, and a measured manner. We can do that. And on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I say we must do that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.