Transcripts For CSPAN Capitol Hill Hearings 20130301

It is very clear that the American People want a balanced approach for the deficit reduction. We have to make smart spending cuts. We can do that by closing tax loopholes and asking millionaires to pay a little bit more. That is basically what our proposal is and we will vote on it this afternoon. We want a balanced approach. That is what the American People want. By almost an 80 margin, that is what americans want. Even a majority of republicans want this. It is hard to comprehend. The only republicans in the country who disagree with this proposal are the ones who serve in congress. Today, to make it worse, they once again said they would filibuster any proposal that we ask. I went to the floor. They said a want to have a vote on a new proposal, one says that they want something else. Senator ayotte and senator graham and someone else wanted to cut federal employees among other things. I said im a fine. Lets have a majority vote on all three. Objection. And other filibuster. Unfortunate this is where we are. This buffet will says that if you make 5 million in one year, you should pay a minimum of 30 taxes. That is fair. America agrees with our approach. The American People deserve better. They have endured a lot of economic uncertainty. The economy is poised for a strong, longterm growth. The stock market is at alltime highs. Our job in congress should provide a foundation for our economy in these next steps. That is what we have done. It is a shame that republicans have decided to protect special interest. It is more important to them than our economy. Senator schumer . Two months ago, there was a bill that had bipartisan support. Congress agreed on a bipartisan aces that the sequestration would be replaced with a 50 50 split of spending cuts and taxes. Et committeeudgi voted for it. So did paul ryan. I voted for it. So did chuck. 84 from the senate voted for this balanced approach. The House Republicans, House Speaker boehner and congressman ryan, are nowhere to be found. They claim they passed two bills to solve the problem. Instead of trying again, the house had decided to sit it out. Both sides of the aisle need to come together to solve this problem. House republicans deserve we have heard of the dire effects of the sequestration. There has been talks of the impact. Medical research. Think about that. We will cut back on medical research to find cures for Heart Disease . Alzheimers . Cancer . Fewer children will receive vaccinations. 70,000 children in illinois will be expelled from a historic program, including 2700 preschoolers because of pre chris sequestration. Our bill would ensure that billionaires are not paying a lower tax than the secretaries who work for them. Our plan closes tax loopholes that reward companies that move companies overseas. We cut wasteful payments. Let me spotlight that. Illinois is one of the major recipients. A direct support payments. We have seen a steady stream of republicans come to the floor in the last several days. They will have a chance to and this with this afternoon. The pentagon has to play a role in deficit reduction, but we want to make sure it does not jeopardize the National Security are hard the men and women who have volunteered to serve america. For over 200 years our National Values have reflected our commitment to infrastructure, innovation, lets hope the votes today will do the same. Thank you. For the last several weeks, washington has been consumed with the debate over the across the board spending cuts due to take and effect tomorrow. But the discussion is not productive. Rather than hash out the best way to replace sequestration, the conversation has been involved around with who came up the idea in the first place. The blame game is a side ceremony both sides have their fingerprints on sequestration but only one side is trying to hard to solve it. Amazingly enough, the republicans dancing in the streets, happy with the thought that sequestration will happen. The cuts were always intended to force the two sides to the table to revive a grand bargain on deficit reduction. We democrats are longing for that balanced approach. Were willing to make the tough choices to get a grand bargain. We need a dance partner. Weve had trouble finding one. In the house, the leadership is running out the clock until sequester hits. They welcome the cuts, no matter the consequences for our national defense, for middle class families. They are pointing to two votes they took in the last congress, as if those votes have any bearing now. In the senate, the other side cant agree on a single plan to deal with sequestration, thats because they are divided over the central question on whether we should try to stop the cuts. Many of them want the cuts to go forward as damaging as they are to average americans to our economy, to jobs. Now they have tried to unite their caucus around a measure that does not turn off the cuts but try to pass the buck to the president. It has been fairly remarkable watching so many republicans who so distrust this president , willing to see the power of the purse to him. This shows you, no matter what they say republicans are actually quite worried about the unpopularity of these across the board cuts. They want the president to own the consequences. Later today we will have two votes. These votes will not be the last word on the issue. The debate is only beginning. In the coming weeks under chairman murrays leadership, we will continue the budget that will keep this debate front and center. It will show the contrast in the two sides approach. With that i turn it over to the chairman. What i hold in my hand right here is a warn notice. This is a frightening piece of paper that many families will get in the next several weeks and months. This is a notice that is given to employees, families, that they will be laid off or furloughed. It is a piece of paper that will spell serious economic setbacks for our families to their ability to send their kids to college, for their ability to go out to restaurants and keep the local businesses thriving. If the republicans formal follow through on their threats notices like this with hundred go out to more and more workers across the country. It doesnt make sense. It does not need to happen. Our bill to replace sequestration is fair. It is good for middleclass families, it is good for our economy, and it will prevent these notices from being handed to workers across america. Republicans ought to join us and allow it to pass. Democrats are united to replace sequestration. Republicans are all over the map, on the one hand some are saying sequestration is terrible, it is all president obamas fault. On the other hand, you have Tea Party Republicans cheering for these cuts. Many republicans have said it would hollow out our military and cause our workers to lose their jobs. On the other hand republicans seem to think that closing loopholes for the richest americans is too high a price to avoid the serious consequences to this defense. The only thing they agree on is they refuse to compromise, even a little bit. Senate republicans have spent days fighting among themselves on the bill that they are going to offer to vote against ours. Republicans could not be bothered to take a vote. Maybe because Speaker Boehner knows his members cant pass anything. The republicans are going to be under a lot of pressure to explain to their constituents back home, why they would prefer the pain of sequestration to our responsible compromise replacement. Hopefully, when they realize there is no good explanation we can come to the table and work to solve this problem. Speaking of republicans in the house finally working with us, i want to say im so delighted that the house leadership, after 500 days after we enacted the violence against women act expired passed today on a vote of 286138. 87 republicans joined with us and im excited for the women that have been abused and nowhere to go and many immigrants that were left out of the process in the past. When the president signs this bill they will be part of this process again. Ok. Todays vote notwithstanding with House Republican leaders waiting saying over and over they are waiting for the senate to do something. What has been the substance of any talk between you and senator mcconnell over sequestration replacement . Has there been any real substance on moving a vote . This takes a lot of pizzazz for the House Republicans to say they are waiting for the democrats to do something. They have done nothing. They did not allow the republicans to have a vote. They are falling back on something that they did in last congress. I would hope is that the republicans there, both of them, would agree with their republicans around the country, that we should have a balanced approach to get rid of this and look forward to the sequestration, which is the 27th of next month. Get it done at once. It would be so easy to do. There are things they agreed to in the past on getting rid of some of the tax loopholes and of that nature that we could have a balanced approach. So far there is no substance between you and senator mcconnell, it all starts tomorrow . Senator reid, by this point, leaders would have gotten in a room even tried to work this out. Why didnt you do that this time . It is not like we havent talked about it. Ive had meetings with the speaker. We have had lots of efforts made by individual senators and republicans in the house and the senate. The republicans want sequester to go forward. They want the sequester to go forward. They said so. Any efforts to get reasonable approach to this, they wont let us do it. Couldnt they say the same thing about you because youre working to pass a bill one day before the sequester is supposed to kick in . I dont understand how you can say the same thing about us. We have a balanced approach. All they are doing the caucus on tuesday said their proposal were going to cut off Three Fingers and we want to send to the president about which finger goes first. We tried everything we can. They will not budge on anything, period. In the c. R. Next month, changing the way the cuts are being implemented . Yes, were open to any reasonable approach. Yes. But remember, we cannot solve the problems of this country with cuts, cuts, cuts. We cut 2. 6 trillion. We need to do more but were going to do it in a balanced approach. We cannot continue to hurt the middleclass and the poor. You said that revenues is part of the are you going insist on riches as part of the c. R. Talks . Revenues as part of the c. R. Talks . We have to wait to see what the house sends us. Well wait to see what they send us. We have had different proposals from them, even this week. Is it going to be a straight c. R. . It is going to be defense and veterans in it . We dont know. Well wait to see what they send us and well work on it. Can you understand the frustration of the American People that youre blaming the republicans and the republicans are blaming you . Nobody is talking until the day it kicks. I read today that the writers the republicans arent willing to deal with the democrats. All this stuff, democrats arent doing anything, republicans arent doing anything. I believe that you guys have an obligation to report it the way it is. This did not happen yesterday, we have been fighting this for a couple of days. They are unwilling to do what the American People want done. It is as simple as that. We do not believe that sequestration is appropriate. We do not believe that the appropriation process, which the nonexistent is a good approach. That is why im appreciative of chairman mcculski, we need to get back to regular order. Voting here, ready to work, even tomorrow . Or the house and senate wont be here the day these cuts kick in . Were in session, were not going any place. If the republicans are willing to let us vote on our bill on a simple majority vote and were vote on their, were ready to work. But at this stage, we dont have a partner to dance with. When you draft your bill, are you willing to put spending levels at sequester levels or you going to assume there wont be a sequester Going Forward . In our budget resolution that we will put out in a few weeks, we will replace sequestration with responsible deficit reduction. One more time on the c. R. If theres a choice, is the choice over here to shut down the government or continue the sequester for the rest of the year . Lets see what they are going to send to us. Were going to move forward. Were working with republicans to come up with a bill. She will be ready to do that. Theres republicans who want more than a c. R. We have republicans who believe we should do an appropriations bill. We have to wait to see what they send us. Thanks, everybody. The Senate Considered bills by eric parties designed to replace the automatic spending cuts designed by third parties to replace the automatic spending cuts. It included tax cuts for those earning more than 1 million. It restructured defense cuts. This is 25 minutes. The senator from New Hampshire are. I asked that in addition to the sequester today, therell be a time set aside for the majority leaders in confrontation that without intervening action or debate, the Senate Proceeds to a roll call vote on the motion to proceed to my alternative bill dealing with the sequester. Majority leader . I reserve the right to object. Ct by midnight tomorrow friday acrosstheboard cuts will kick in. Theyre going to start kind of slow but ramp up really quick. So the question for us today is are w going to act to replace these acrosstheboard cuts . The proposal that we have put forward will prevent the cuts with a balanced plan. Our plan would protect air safety, our food supply and, most importantly, our National Security. And,rankly, mr. President , air safety that i mentioned, food supply, thats also part of our National Security and our military. The alternative that has been put forward by my friend, the republican leader, wouldnt replace the cuts. As i said earlier this morning here on the floor, one of my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus said at our caucus on tuesday that he understood what the republicans are going to put forward, and he said it would be like sending the president an order, weve already decided youre going to cut off Three Fingers, and youre giving the president the alternative to decide which one you cut first. The republican alternative wou not replace the cuts but would call for making the cuts in some different way. Republicans call the proposal flexibility. In fact, its anything but that. Their proposal is entirely enflexible. The one proposal we have forward says if you make 5 million a year, youll have to pay 30 tax minimum. Thats it. That doesnt sound too outrageous. And thats why the American People agree. Democrats, republicans and democrats, independents and 60 of the republicans. Now now mr. President , the republican side seeks a third vote o the ayotte amendment, which would replace the cuts with a parade of even more unfair cuts and penalties or immigrants, people receiving health care under the obamacare, Consumer Financial protection bureau, those kinds of things. Now, mr. President , and i also have trouble understanding i frankly do understand why the ayotte, as iead in the paper, ayotte, mccain and graham dont like the republican proposal. Havent we ceded enough power to the president . But anyway, so its not our fault that were here, that the republican leader chose to offer not the ayotte alternative but instead chose a republican alternative that were going to vote on later today. I return to my main question again briefly. Are republicans really filibustering a vote to replace the sequester . Would the republican leader modify his consent to allow for a simple upordown vote on each of the two alternatives . Would it make a difference if we allow votes on three bills . The ayotte alternative. I would happily have three votes if the republican leader would simply allow the votes to be held at majority thresholds. So ive asked that. I can do it formally. And ill be happy to do so if theres any taking of my request here. But that having been the case, unless my friend, the republican leader, says why dont you put that in proper form, then i would be happy to do that. Then wed have votes on all three. Simple majority on each one of them. Not hearing someone s thats a great idea, then i would object to the request from my friend from New Hampshire. Mr. Mcconnell mr. President , i would say to my friend the majority leader, i would object in either propound, such a consent or not, whatever he chooses. But i would object. The presiding officer is there objection to the original request . Mr. Reid yes, i did that. The presiding officer the objection is heard. The senator from arizona. Mr. Mccain mr. President , obviously we regret theres not been able to reach an agreement. Im especially disappointed that we are unable to consider the ayotte amendment which is an alternative to the sequestration, a flexibility of sequestration which still sooner or later have the same draconian effects on our National Security. I also would point out to my colleagues that what were about to g through is in some respects a charade because we know that the proposal on that side willot succeed with 60 votes. The proposal on this side will not succeed with 60 votes. Meanwhile the clock moves on until some time tomorrow night. Some of us warned for a long time about the effects of sequestration. And if we want to have a blame game, then ill take blame. Evybody take blame. But isnt it time that we prevented what our military leaders in uniform who have made their careers and their lives serving a sacrificing for this country say would harm and inflict terrible damage on our ability to defend thisation, our inability to train and equip the men who are serving . I always appreciate very much when members on both sides of the aisle praise the men and women who are serving in the military. Im always pleased to see that. But shouldnt we be thinking about them now . Shouldnt we be thinking about those men and women who are serving who literally dont know what theyre going to be doing tomorrow . Like the crew of the Aircraft Carrier that w just taken from decided not to deploy to the middle east at a time when tensions are incredibly high . I would also point out to my colleagues that this is not a fair sequestration. Most americans believe that this is half out of defense, half out its not. Because with the time of the formulation of the sequestration, about half of the spending that we engage in is exempt, such as compensation for the president , such as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, such as payment to the District Of Columbia pension fund, such as host nation support fund for relocation. All of these and many, many others were made exempt, which meant that the cuts and the reductions in defense was even larger and obviously those who designed this legislation decided that that the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and relocation funding was more important than national defense, because we didnt exempt national defense. Thats disgraceful. So 19 of Discretionary Spending is out of defense. Were asking for 50 cut out of defense on top of 87 billion thats already been enacted under secretary gates, on top of 487 bipartisa billion in defene percentage of Gross Domestic Product for defense continues to decline, and what are we doing . You know, last week there was a few days ago ther was a wonderful ceremony in the white house where a brave american received the congressional medal of hadnt. I happened to go to an evening function where a book that was written by jake tapper i recommend it to all of my colleagues where eight of their colleagues were killed. And here were unable to make sure that these young men and women who are serving in harms way have the quilt and training and the equipment and training and everything they need. We are doing the men and women who are serving this nation a great disservice, and the president did them a disservice when heaid in the campaign, not to worry, not to worry. Sequestration wont happen. The president of the United States said that. I didnt say it. We the three of us traveled this country warning about the effects of sequestration, and of course we now know that the idea came from the white house. But thats the blamegame. And ill be glad to engage in that. But cant we at least come to some agreement to prevent this . Are we going to lurch from one fiscal cliff to another . And if we want do that, thats one thing. But what were doing to the military look, general odierno is one of the really great leaders that i have had the opportunity of knowing for many years. General odierno, the chief of staff of the army, a man whos got decorations from here to here, said that he cannot replace the men and women who are serving in afghanistan under this sequestration because he doesnt have the ability to train their replacements. Isnt that alarm enough for us . So were going to go through a charade here in a little while. Were going to have a vote on the democrat proposal and itll not get sufficient votes and the same thing here on this side, and the clock will tick and tomorrow tomorrow, on the last day, the president is going to call people over to the white house toee if we can address it. Where was he in theast year . But, again, im not taking the floor today for the blame game. I am pleading for the men and women who are serving this nation in harms way, who every single someday day have a hellt tougher time than we do, that we cant sit down with the president of the United States and get this issue resolved before we do great damage to our national sciewmplenational secu. I thank senator aayotte for her professional. It is real reductions in spending so that we dont have to go through the sequestration. On the one side now we have a choice between quote flexibility which nobody really knows what that means and on the other side obviously a proposal that really bears no relevance to the issue that faces us. So i thank my colleagues for the time. If i sound a little emotional on this issue, its because i am. And it seems to me that we at least on this issue of National Security and the men and women who serve our nation, we should come together. And i stand ready tout everything on the table to prevent what could be, in the words of the departing secretary of defense, a devastati blow to our act to defend this nation and in what i could argue are the most dangerous times. Mr. President , i yield the floor. The presiding officer the senator from South Carolina. Mr. Graham i want to thank the senator from New Hampshire who autred this amendment. Shes put a lot of time and effort into trying to fix sequestration in the first year, to look at programs that are not as essential to the nation in my view as the department of defense. And let me just short of put this in perspective. I dont need a poll to tell me what to think about this. The majority leader referenced some poll out there about where the American People are at. I appreciate polling. Its a tool that all politicians use. I dont need one here. To know where im at. And the question is, do the people in South Carolina think am a right or wrong . I will a have an election in 2014. I am certainly willing to stand before the people of south calina and say what were doing in this sequestration proposal is illconceived, danger arks and despicable. And leat lets start with the commander in chief. This is what mr. Lew said, our new treasury secretary. Make no mistake, the sequestration is not meant to be policy. Rather, it is meant to be an unpalatable option that all parties want to avoid. That was their view of sequestration. And according to bob woodward and comments since, this idea came out of the white house, and the white house thought that if you created a penalty clause for supercommittee fail our called sequestration where you would have to take 0 billion of t 1. 2 trillion out of the Defense Department, that would make the supeommittee more likely to achieve a result, and if you took 600 billion out of nondefense that would put pressure to get the supercommittee to get the right result. Well, were going to spend 45 trillion over the next decade. The question for the country is, can we save 1. 2 trillion without destroying the Defense Department and raising taxes . Yes, we could if we tried. So put me in the camp that this is aheavable. It is not something that is unachievable. But what senator mccain said is very important. Twothirds of the budget almost is exempt from sequestration. When you hear republicans say, surely we can find 85 bilon t of 3. 5 trillion in spending spending, to my republican colleagues, stop saying that. Thats not accurate. Were not cutting 85 billion out of 3. 5 triion. Were cutting 85 billion out of about 1. 3 trillion, 1. 25 trillion. Becausehe budget control act took off the table twothirds of the government from being curt. Now, ill get to the president in a minute. But let me tk about my party, the party of reagan rashing the party of peace throughs strength, the party that believes at least we used to, that the numberone obligation of the federal government before you do anything else is to get National Security right. That was what made Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan. Thats what i believe. I dont need a poll to tell me that. I dont care if 90 of the people in the country said the Defense Department is not my primary concern. Count me in the 10 . So the party of Ronald Reagan, even though it came out of the white house, this very bad idea, agreed to it. And what did we gray to . We agreed to take off the table twothirds of the federal government. Now, pell grants my sister got a pell grant when my parents died, very important program. It helps people go to college. Who are lowincome americans. In 2008 it was 16. 25 billion, in 2013 its a 41. 5 billion. Food stamps a lot of people need help; i understand that the Food Stamp Program has doubled since 2508. Since 2008. I guess the Republican Party feels like pell grants and food stamps and the f. A. A. And Home Mortgage Interest Deduction and awful this other stuff in the federal government should be shielded, but those whove been fighting the war that protects us all from radical iam should be on the chopping block. Ronald rgan should be rolling over in his grave. Shame on everybody who agreed this was a good idea on our side. I cannot tell you how disgusted i am with the concept that when it comes time to cut, because a bunch of politicians cant get an agreement, we fire the soldiers, keep the politicians, and every other social program intact but half the cuts on those who are fighting the war. So the next time youo on a military base, good luck with looking those men and women in the eye, because i dont see how you could. I dont see how you could go onto a military base or see somebody in the airport and shake their hand and thank them for their Service Given the fact that youve taken the Defense Department and made it something not very special anymore. So i will wrap this up here. Im going to im going to get to the president and then ill wrap it up. This is what secretary panetta said. After ten years of these cuts s wed have the smallestround rces since 40, the smallest number of ships since 1915 and the Smallest Air Force in its hoamplet this isnt like the drawdowns in the past with the when the potential enemy was disabled and in some way rendered ineffective. Were still confronting a number of threats in the world. It would dismate our defense, cripple us in terms of our ability torotect this country, it would result in the hollowing out of our force it would terribly weaken our abet to respond to threats in the world. It a ship without sailors a brigade without bullets, an air train without enough pilots, it a paper tiring. It invites aggression. A hollow milary doesnt happen by accident. It comes from poor stewardship and poor leadership. I couldn agree more. To my democratic colleagues, were not going to raise anymore taxes to specked the money on the government is to spend the money on the government. The next time were going to try to get out of debt. Every time there is a crisis in this nation, wa, you want to rae taxes. Weve got enough moneyf we just spend it better. To my republican colleagues, theres not enough flexibility in the world to change the topline number. You either believe secretary panetta or you dont. You either believe every military commander i dont trust everything a general tells me, but the question for me is, disco do i trust all the generao tell me the same thing . Can all of them be wrong . It is one thing to have a dispute with a general and admiral but what every one tells you the same thing and we dont believe them, we need to fire them or act accordingly. As to the president , youve got one obligation that nobody in this body has. Youre the commander in o in chf the United States. They trust you, they need you, your primary goal is to protect take care of those in uniform and their families. Man, you have let them down. My party let them down, but youre different than any other politician. Youre the commander in chief. How you could have considered this as an acceptable outcome just makes nesic to my stomach. How any commander in chief could have been comfortable with the idea that if the supercommittee table, were goinfails, were ge military. You finally go back down to the military base a few days before this kicks n this is pathetic leadership by the commander in chievement this is an abandonment of the Republican Partys belief u this is a low point for me in the United States congress. Were not going to raise taxes to fund the government. re going to raise taxes in my construct to pay down debt and fix entitlements. So i cannot tell you how ashamed i am of what weve done to those who have really been busting their b. T. U. For the lt 11 their butt for the last 11 years, who have been deploild ployed time and time again. The thank you you get from your president and the congress is were going put your life on the chopping block. God, if w cant do better than that, all of us should be fired. Fire the politicians, keep the soldiers. Mr. Mccain would the senator respond to one question . The presiding officer the senator from rhode island. Mr. Whitehouse i believe i have the floor. Mr. Mccain i have the right to ask a question of the person who has the floor. The presiding officer the senator from South Carolina yielding for a question. Mr. Whitehouse okay. Mr. Mccain my question is, do you think the American People appreciate and understand what this does to the lives of the men and women who are serving for example, those who are serving on that Aircraft Carrier that they said was going to deploy for many months and it was canceled at the last minuteg plans that are now going to have to be canceled . The deployments that will be changed . Not to mention the massive layoffs in the Defense Industry which sometimes are not easily replaceable. Thats my question. Mr. Graham i dont know if they do or not, senator mccain. Weve done everything we could, the three of us, to tell them whats coming our way. All i can say is that every admiral whos told us the same thing, i respect what theyre telling us. Leon panetta is a democrat but hes dead right. Hes been a gre secretary of defense. I trust their judgment. I know enough about the military budget to know if you take 600 billion out of the budget on top of the 487 billion plus the 89 billion, youre going to make us less able to defend this nation, put our men and women at risk and thats what this debate is all about. I want to thankenator ayotte whos come up with neither the republican and democratic bills received the votes to move forward. There is a meeting at the white house tomorrow. Press secretary jay carney spoke at a briefing. The senate will vote on a bill that will deal with the budget in a balanced way. The only reason it may not pass the senate is because a minority of the republicans would filibuster that bill. That is a stark indication of the state of things when a bill is blocked by a minority when that bill would avert the problems that we have confronting us with this eminent dendrite. We will see what eminent deadline. We will see what the republicans do. Maybe they will have a change of heart. Iheartmproving how we treat the president believes we need to come together and deal with the sequester. It is one piece of the broader challenge. It is reducing our deficit in a balanced way. That is what the sequester was part of when it was included in the budget control act. It was designed to never come into affect. It was onerous to both sides. The president has put forward a proposal that is balanced. It continues to progress we have made in deficit reduction. More than two dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue per presented. Represented. It is a kind of balance we have not seen from republicans. Hopefully there is action to deal with the sequester or take up a project with a bigger deal with more deficit reduction that helps us reach that 4 trillion will read goal. Hopefully theyre ready to talk seriously about compromise and making sure that washington is not inflicting wounds on the economy when the economy should be growing and creating jobs. Were there any preconditions . In terms of taxes are things are types of things there are no preconditions. This is a meeting with the president and leaders of congress. Any topic is up for discussion. If one member of the group decides if he wants to do that. The immediate hurt this of the meeting is to talk about the imminent sequester deadline and the need to avert it. If it is implemented, take action in a balanced way to deal with the deficit reduction in a way that does not unduly burden seniors or middleclass families or parents with children with disabilities. By doing that, it allows our economy to continue to grow the economy we have seen underway for three years. It still has a long way to go. The president is firm in his conviction that he needs to include bounce in the deficit reduction. It is unacceptable for the my way or highway approach. As is true of the proposals the republicans are putting forward today, what is true about that proposal is true of the general position which is why they would rather see the sequester take effect with its negative effects on Economic Growth and ask a single wealthy individual to pay more. They do not want us big corporations to forgo their loopholes or limit their deduction. That is not a position that is sustainable. It is not fair to the American People. On the next washington journal we will discuss automatic spending cuts with former representative Donna Edwards of maryland. Also joining us to take your questions about the sequester is representative it randy forbes are virginia. Washington journal is live on cspan every day at 7 a. M. Eastern. House Speaker John Boehner spoke with recorders reporters. Good morning, everyone. Americans know washington has a spending problem. It is hurting families and Small Businesses and must be addressed. There are many people in washington who do not believe the government has a spending problem, the minority leader, the minority whip, who do not believe we have a spending problem. The president said to me in december we do not have a spending problem. In the four years since the Senate Democrats last passed a budget, Government Debt has ballooned to 16 trillion. I do not believe that that is a result of insufficient taxation. This year the federal government will bring in revenue more money in from taxpayers than any year in our history. The debt is a result, i believe, of spending that is out of control. I think the spending problem we have in washington is threatening the future for our kids and grandkids and is threatening the american dream. Republicans have offered solutions to promote Economic Growth and address our longterm debt crisis, and we will again as part of our upcoming budget deal with these issues in an open and honest way. In contrast, president obama and Senate Democrats are demanding more tax hikes to fuel more stimulus spending. Republicans have voted twice to replace the president s sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms. The president and Democratic Leaders have failed to pass a solution of their own. It is time they do. My message at the white house will be the same as what i am telling you today. It is time for them to do their job and pass a bill. This week we announced that hr1 will be reserved for tax reform legislation. The tax reform that lowers rates and closes loopholes will help create american jobs and promote more Economic Growth in our country. The president talked about closing loopholes, but only as sufficient to fund more government spending. Do we want to close loopholes . We sure do, but only if we are going to do tax reform that focuses on creating jobs, not funding more government. Last year we proposed generating new revenue through tax reform. We did that as an alternative to the president s demand for higher tax rates, and ultimately the president got revenues and got his way in higher rates. Given those facts, the revenue issue is now closed. Any revenue generated by closing loopholes should be used to lower rates across the board for american families. That will create jobs and make america more competitive. That choice is simple. Should tax reform focus more often the government or on creating jobs . I am for more jobs, too. Mr. Speaker, if the cuts in sequestration are not smart, why was there never even talk of a bipartisan negotiation to avoid those . The house has acted twice over the last 10 months to replace these cuts with smarter cuts. We have done our job. The president has not offered a plan. It is time for them to pass a plan. [indiscernible] the house did its job. I am happy to talk of the president and senator reid, but the way things happen around here is the house passes a bill, the Senate Passes a bill, we disagree, we go to conference. It looks like the sequestration will go into effect. Are you open to oneonone negotiations with president obama which many outside analysts think it is the only way this can be resolved . I am happy to talk and work with the president , but the house has done its job. It is time for the senate to do its job. [indiscernible] to any extent possible we should follow regular order to arrive here. It does not happen as long as it should. Regular order around here is we have done our work. They have not done their part. The house should not have to pass a third bill to replace the sequester before the Senate Passes one. The clock on all of this debate over Debt Reduction did not start at christmastime when the president did get his revenue. It started a couple of years ago. The overall Debt Reduction that you all have done has been roughly 21 spending cuts to revenue. Why is the revenue discussion closed now . The president got his tax hikes. The American Economy is going to create more tax revenue this year than any year in our history. We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. It is time to get serious. You are up 21. You are up 21 already. You are up 21. Why is the revenue discussion over . You are asking the question, how much more money do we want to steal from the American People to fund more government . I am for no more. One of the central parts of the debate has been your calling this the president s sequester. Even, if that is true, which you and bob woodward think it is true, how much does that matter since he accepted it and you ushered it through your chamber and got his signature . Look, listen, it was the president s sequester, it was his team that insisted on it, and lets remember why we have to sequester and why the president insisted upon it. Because the president did not like the agreement that senator reid, senator mcconnell, and i had to deal with the First Tranche of cuts and to move the debt limit out a year. He wanted to make sure he did not have to deal with a debt limit before his reelection. This is about his convenience, in not wanting to go to refight the debt limit again. That is why he came up with a sequester as a backstop to the supercommittee. But the possibility for accepting that . It was a negotiation. I did not like it any more than anybody else. When the president and harry reid told me they would work with us to get an outcome of the supercommittee, i felt confident we could get an outcome. Unfortunately, we did not. Mr. Boehner, you said you have worked to get an agreement. Are you concerned about the optics of not even doing that and the house being out . I will be here tomorrow. I will go down to the white house and accept the president s invitation. We have laid our cards on the table. We have shown that we can pass a bill to replace the sequester. That is why we did it twice. It is time for the senate act. [indiscernible] everybody is talking about a lot of blame going around right now, but few people have blamed the supercommittee. They were the ones who were charged. Dont they share blame, and if they do, why do we not hear from them . I do not blame the supercommittee members or their leaders who worked with the members of the supercommittee. It is unfortunate they did not come to an outcome. There were an awful lot of others influencing the supercommittee to not come to an agreement unless their goals were met. I would start there with the president of the United States. Thanks. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] House Democrats also answered the automatic spending cuts. Good morning, everyone. Im honored to be here with some of my female colleagues in the house of representatives. Others are on the floor as we debate on the violence against women act. It is important to come together today. Tomorrow is struck with meaning on the calendar. Nursed, it is march 1. It is the day first, it is march 1. It is the day that the across theboard cuts will take place. It is the day when people will be getting a inc. Slip. 750,000 American Workers will be laid off because of the sequester implementation. Unless it it is stopped, you could lose your job. It is also the beginning of womens history month. I mention these two points because of the impact of sequestration on women. It is specific. It is substantial. It must be avoided. My colleagues are here detail some about it, but consider this cuts to womens health, from prenatal care to cancer screenings and cuts the services to victims of Domestic Violence 20 million will be cut out of the violence against women account, 20 million for cuts to initiatives to support children and to support wic and head start, cuts to womens jobs. Democrats want solutions. Republicans want sequestration. Some of them have called it a home run. That does not sound like anybody is on team america if they think sequestration is a home run. There is no time to waste. You know that. We are at once again against a time limit. We should stay here. How could we have been gone for 10 days just leading up this, coming in now for a few days . We have a positive solution. Chris van hollen has put forth an initiative that recognizes that he must cut spending, that we need revenue, and we want growth with jobs. It is similar to the proposal in the senate, is positive, and had a good suggestions that some republicans have made themselves in the past. Our priorities are clear. Creation of jobs. I have sent you before, others have told me since last week when we talked about what is the root of the word sequester. Sequester is really to hold hostage, and that is exactly what this does. It holds hostage. We will go to the white house tomorrow, and everyone will be there with an open mind to deal with a wider range of issues so we do not have these minuteto minute, monthtomonth crises, manufactured crises. For the sake of our country, for the sake of americas women, the health and security of our Economic Security for our families, democrats and republicans must Work Together to protect the middle class, create jobs, and reduce the deficit in a very, very sensible way. With that i am pleased to yield to a champion for women, whether paycheck fairness and lily ledbetter, the distinguished chairman of the policy committee, rosa delauro of connecticut. Thank you very much, and i am again honored as you are to stay here with our colleagues today to address these issues. If i may quickly paraphrase from a report by the National Womens law center, women are more likely than men to be poor at all stages of their lives because of the ongoing employment discrimination and greater responsibilities for unpaid caregiving. These dangerous, indiscriminate, and acrosstheboard cuts threaten Vital Services for women and their families and the services they rely on every single day in order to make their way. They also threaten our economy and will cost women thousands of jobs. While there will be a Ripple Effect throughout the economy, many of the jobs destroyed by this sequester will be Public Sector jobs that are disproportionately held by women. Women make up 57 of Public Sector jobs. While the private sector has continued to gain jobs of the past year, the Public Sector has lost 74,000 jobs, 85 of these being 63,000 jobs held by women, and they were lost by women. Cuts to head start could cost 14,000 teachers, teachers assistants, and staff. Cuts to education grants would mean 21,500 women teachers and aide jobs lost. Cuts to special education would force the layoffs of 7,500 lower jobs, and wic, you will see a loss at the state and local level because we know who are working in working in the wic offices. You take chowder, where 86 of families serve our single parent households and we know who the child care providers are in this country. Theyre mostly women. Allowing these cuts to pass is reckless, irresponsible, and it is especially harmful to women, to their jobs, and to the services that they rely on. What do women want from this economy . What do they want for their families . They want an economy that creates jobs and that grows the middle class and provides an opportunity for themselves and for their families to succeed. We should not be going down this road. The democrats have an alternative. We need to take hold of it and move forward and make sure that womens Economic Security is not further eroded. It is now my pleasure to introduce jan schakowsky. Warning sequestration is dangerous to womens health. Four examples one, sequestration will cut essential initiatives, including 8 million from the breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program and 24 million for Reproductive Health services in title x. Two, the National Institutes of health will cut 1. 56 billion, cutting back research in areas such as alzheimers, environMental Health, links to Breast Cancer and Mental Health services. Sequestration hurts mothers. While the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in preventing maternal and infant mortality, sequestration cuts 4 million from the safe motherhood initiative, 50 million from the maternal and child health services, and incredibly, will deny lifesaving in immunization to 30,000 children. Three, sequestration hurts women as caregivers. Women are typically the caregivers, not just to children, but to aging parents. Sequestration would cut 12. 6 million from the National Family caregivers program, reducing services to 700,000 family caregivers. Four, sequestration will hurt the many women who work in health care professions. Look at the National Health service corps, Education Assistance and training for direct care workers, nurses, family physicians, and other healthcare professionals. Warning sequestration is bad for the health of women and their families. Now it is my pleasure to introduce someone with whom i have the pleasure of cochairing the Seniors Task Force of the Democratic Caucus, someone who is a champion for women of all ages, and that is doris matsui. Thank you for bringing us to get here. All of us here today understand we should be focusing on moving us forward, but the ugly word of sequestration trends to cripple our economy, with severe cuts that will be devastating to our countrys women, children, and families. If sequestration occurs, 70,000 Young Children will be kicked out of head start programs, and in my district of sacramento, 3,000 children will lose access. These kids do not know what sequestration is about. They only care about learning their colors, their abcs, getting their snacks, and perhaps learning how to play with each other. The mothers care about the safe nurturing environment that head start provides and the Resources Available to them to get back on their feet. This includes someone i recently talked to. Ashley, a sacramento resident who knew, had to make changes in her life when she became a mother. Thanks to head start, her daughter received nutritious meals and early education, and ashley was able to finish her education while also working. Sequestration will force cuts to the women, infants, and childrens program. Wic connects lowincome women with services, parental care to healthy food options. Wic is a helping hand to women who needed the most. I have seen the lines of wic. There are two wic programs in my district. These are not cuts that we can afford at all. I stand here with my colleagues today to urge the majority to work with us to prevent them. That is my pleasure to introduce a good friend of mine, Donna Edwards from maryland. Thank you bringing us all here together to focus our attention on how these harsh and arbitrary, acrosstheboard budget cuts will harm millions of women across the country. Here today, after months of failure to pass a violence against women act, a bipartisan act, it is quite the irony that later on today the house is going to finally reach authorize and hours before they take a sledgehammer to the already strapped budgets of a nations mystic violence per month, causing disruption of services. More than 6 million women each year are harmed by Domestic Violence. Their children in every single congressional districts across the country, millions of children live in homes where they witness Domestic Violence, and as a result of the republican failure and it is their failure to stop the sequestration services these women rely on for their lives and safety will be cut by 20 billion. 112,000 victims of Domestic Violence, including 3,500 in the small state of maryland, will not receive the Critical Services they need to escape Domestic Violence. 230,000 victims will be calling crisis hotlines, and those calls will go on unanswered. 230,000 calls to crisis hotlines around the country. You can imagine that in the middle of the night a woman is being battered, she has her two children, she wants to get to safety, she places a phone call to a hotline, and that line goes unanswered. That is what sequestration means to the victims of Domestic Violence. And so i think this is shameful. We all do. We know it can be stopped. Here we are on a thursday, set to go home for the weekend. First of all, people working in america they do not go to home on thursday. Theres time for us to stop this. The republicans hold the gavel. The republicans have the ability to stop sequestration. It is really very shameful that they are going to go home this weekend without doing that. And so, for the women who are forced to stay in their homes with their abuser because theres no place to go because shelters have been cut, because hotlines go on answered, that is on the hands of the gop here in the house of representatives. And so i would urge our colleagues, even at this late moment, that there is something that they can do about that. Democrats have put forward a fair and balanced proposal that balances spending cuts with revenue so we can deal both with the deficits, but also with how we grow our economy, and it is time for them to do this. With that i would like to turn the microphone over to my colleague who is a leader on Small Business, from new york, nydia velazquez. Sequestration is bad for our economy. These types of cuts will be detrimental to our country, and particularly to the job creators, Small Businesses. I want to remind you that womens own businesses are the fastestgrowing sector in our economy. 8 million strong, while they generate over 1 trillion these businesses are some of the most innovative, and unlike their corporate counterparts, they do not have an army of attorneys, and they do not have ready access to the capital markets. Filling this void is the Small Business administration, which fills our commitment to women entrepreneurs. The sequester has the potential to undermine this very promise by reducing sba funding. As a result, loans to women will be reduced by 250 million, translating to an decrease of 2,500 jobs. This means fewer women will be able to access affordable capital to turn their ideas, their dreams, into reality. When it comes to contracting, we have been fighting for so long we even took the Bush Administration to court to implement a contracting women program, and now that it is up and running, were going to shut the door, preventing a level Playing Field for womens businesses to act as federal contractors. We have not achieved the mandating contracting goal of 5 . This will translate to 1. 3 billion in Small Business contracts that will be lost for women entrepreneurs. This will jeopardize at least 15,000 jobs. When combined with the closure of Business Centers that serve mainly women across america that will provide Technical Assistance so that they could turn those dreams and those ideas into a Financial Plan and then go to a bank that is matched by the Small Business center, the womens Small Business center, they will not be there to assist and provide the technical knowhow to help these women. Given the challenges they face, womenowned businesses rely on these programs. By slashing this initiative, years of progress can be undone in an instant. This is not only bad for women, but it is bad for the u. S. Economy. And now it is my pleasure to introduce a new member, a great asset, congresswoman julia brownley. Thank you very much. I want to thank madam leader for holding this Important Press conference and for your leadership on this very important issue. As a member of the Veterans Affairs committee, as an american, and as a proud representative of ventura county, we are home to a large naval base with a very significant veteran community. I am extremely concerned about the impact the sequester will have on our women and men and their families who have courageously served, sacrificed, and defended our country. If Congress Fails to stop the acrosstheboard and unnecessary cuts at this time, so many programs that help veterans, like transitioning to civilian life and finding employment, will be reduced. More veterans with less resources is unacceptable. Our brave men and Women Deserve better. Now is that time to be doing more, not less. For our veterans sake, we need to come together to stop the sequester now. Thank you very much. Thank you. While congresswoman brownley was speaking about veterans, i was thinking of examples of pink slips that will go out to psych director nurses who are there to help our returning vets with ptsd. That will be cut. Mindless cuts. I am so proud of our members, all of our house Democratic Caucus, but i express a special pride in our women today. As you can see, they have knowledge and experience of these issues, working as legislators and in their community. I know they would agree that all the talk here, as serious as it is, is just only more on top of other cuts and other impacts 1. 6 trillion in cuts agreed to in the last congress that have had an impact on everything from the hhs committee, cuts in Research Across the board, and now we have these additional cuts, and lord knows what is in store for us in the future. Women are calling a halt to all of this. We have to change this environment. We have to take these cuts and they get home at the Kitchen Table of our families, where in many cases women are single parent homes, and it is not only bad for them, but for our economy. I have said earlier, i was just saying sequestration equals unemployment. I am proud of congresswomen velazquezs committee. Louise slaughter of the rules committee has been such a leader on these issues. We talked about that chair of the science and technology committee, the list goes on of leadership. And one of the ranking members of this very important exclusive committee in the house, Maxine Waters will report to us on the testimony in her committee yesterday. This is about the economy. We talked specifically out about how it affects people and women in particular, but could you tell us what came from your committee yesterday. Certainly. Thank you very much, leader pelosi. I find that we appear to be coming to this room more and more as women, as you lead us in addressing many of the issues that are arising in this conference in this congress and our need to push back on the negative impacts of what has been done by our friends on the opposite side of the aisle. Yesterday we had mr. Bernanke in our committee, and he came to tell us what he is doing with quantitative easing, and that is trying to stimulate the economy the bond purchases that he has been doing, because he is trying to keep the Interest Rates low and create jobs. He said that it sequestration takes place, that is going to be a great setback. We do not need to be having Something Like sequestration that is going to cause the job, a million jobs that could be lost. He made it very clear, he is not opposed to cuts, but cuts must be done over a long period of time and in a very planned way, rather than the blunt cutting that will be done by sequestration. As you know in this committee, we have all of hud, which is responsible for so many programs that determine the quality of life for women and families. Our Formula Grant Program will be cut by 153 million. These are grants to cities that help with women and children and lowincome programs. We also will cut the home program by 52 million if sequestration takes place. Native American Housing grants, cut 34 million. Public housing, mostly single women in public housing, another 304 million, and homelessness. Everybody claims to be concerned about homelessness and the growing number of women and children who are out there homeless, but they will take a 99 million hit, and on and on and on. We are here today one more time talking about women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and families and have a decent quality of life. Sequestration will set us back. All gains we have made will be lost by sequestration. What is interesting is the purpose of all this is to reduce the deficit, and cutting these investments does not do that. In fact, maxine, from my understanding from chairman bernanke, it is reported he said if you take too big cuts too soon, you can halt the jobs of the Economic Growth, and you can increase the deficit. You do not reduce the deficit. What is the purpose of all of this . It is going to increase the deficit, increase unemployment, affect people in their individual lives, and have an impact on the education of children, safety in our neighborhoods, and we will increase the deficit while we are doing that. It is mindless, it does not make sense. In this month of march, by the end of march, people will see the light and understand that we are not standing for this. Every single day you will be hearing from us on this subject, and my colleagues are resources for questions for you. I am trying to remember who had a question last time. [indiscernible] also the fact that Top Democrats said that pushing major pieces of legislation through. What do you think the role of House Republicans has been in the legislative process . I wondered why i did not realize it sooner. We come to washington to be legislators, to be representatives of our districts and legislators. That piece is missing here. Theyre just making noise, saying that something that may have good domestic consumption back home, but they did not come here to legislate either did not want to or cannot legislate. There is a void here in terms of what is our purpose. They are not here to get something done because their caucus is dominated with Anti Government ideologues. Youre right. The only thing they have been able to pass with their votes is the destructive ryan bill. Other than that, we have had to supply the votes. If we have the supply of votes, we should write the bill. We are the legislative branch. Were not the Central Committee of our parties. We are a serious body. We all have to bring to a level of commitment to the issues of knowledge that the ideas, judgments on the subjects, and we come here to make compromise because none of us is elected as the only one to make a decision. That has not dawned on them. I want to make sure that gets into the record. At least 750,000 jobs lost. Next, and then we will come back. I got to keep a list here. What has the president told you and leaders yesterday, and why are you waiting until the deadline happens to talk about this . The president said how thrilled he was to be there to unveil the statue of rosa parks. This was such an exciting day for us. It was such an exciting day, and i announced that legislation had been introduced that there be a statue in the capitol. Her funeral was november 2. President bush signed the bill december 1. It was the 50th anniversary of her not giving up her seat on the bus. She was a genius. She timed her passing in a way that gave us a month to pass the bill, house and senate, get it signed, and it took some time because her funeral was seven hours long. The president did tell us after he expressed his personal joy at being there for rosa parks that he hoped we all came with the idea we would find solutions. Why are you waiting until tomorrow at the deadline . Why am i waiting . We have been saying you cannot go home, you cannot go home, cannot. We will not be a driveby congress. The mindlessness of the sequestration, combined with a complete cavalier attitude that we do not have to be here to work on a solution, necessitates us staying but we thought something would happen, but how could it happen if we are not here . That is a question you have to pose to the republicans why do you keep putting up roadblocks . My staff will not like it if i say to you what i said the other day. Everybody talks the speaker talks about they are kicking the can down the road. That would be at least some distance. They are nudging the potato across the line. Theyre not making any progress whatsoever. They are setting us back. Ask them. Yes. [indiscernible] we have heard from both sides of the aisle about a sequester. Jim gordon said yesterday we do not like the sequester, but those on the republican side, were getting some of the cuts that we want. We are making progress. What do you say about comments like that about this question being a success . He said it was a home run and a success. Perhaps to take a different point of view, we believe the budget is a statement of our National Values, a vision for our country should be presented, and our vision and values should be represented in how we put a budget together. It should be something that creates jobs and reduces the deficit. Understand the difference between investments for the future and just acrosstheboard mindless cutting. That is what is called the democratic process. They have a view of Anti Government ideology that says cuts no matter what for the sake of cuts. We do not share that view. That is the debate we are engaged in. I would say that it is a false economy to think if you cut education, that you are born to reduce the deficit. Nothing brings more money to the treasury, nothing, than the education of the American People. These are investments. Innovation begins in the classroom. Our competitiveness depends on that. And so i think i do not know if they understand the role of government is and how the budget plays into that, but we agree we have to reduce the deficit and we want growth with jobs and we have these spending cuts. I will go back to my endangered species, where we were two weeks ago, they did not give a hoot, these endangered species, when president bush was racking up this deficit. My colleagues . The deficits has increased during the obama years, theyre trying to put that out, where in fact we have seen the percentage of deficit related to gdp go from 10 down to 5 , and we have seen real dollars in cuts from the deficit. We are making progress, and we can continue with our fragile economy to make more progress. This is not only unnecessary, but completely counterproductive in the direction and the past were taking right now. A very quick point. Some of the folks who are talking about how we must deal with the spending side of the question, versus revenue side, and i will be happy to provide you with this report. They may have not followed what has happened here over the last 10 or 12 years. There is substantial data that will tell you and this is just from the labor, health, education perspective, which is where i am the ranking member, although it has the broadest expense of programming after defense and the largest expanse of resources over the last 10 years there has been 12 billion in cuts to labor, education, and health programs. If you add what we cut to the budget control act, it is another 9 billion. This will be cut between now and 2021, 2022. If you add one year, it will be another 7. 5 billion in cuts to work force training, head start programs, title i, biomedical research, every program that has the opportunity for jobs that will make sure that people can live a life and be able to have that opportunity. They have not read the bill. They have not read what has actually happened in spending cuts, and they need to do that. This is not cause of the deficit. We know the cause of the deficit. We do not have time for one more question, but i promised. Do any of you feel confident or see a Positive Side to this question, in that you will have a chance to rein in some of the defense spending that has grown rapidly over the past decade . Subjecting every dollar that we spent to scrutiny, that is what we have to do to make sure we get our moneys worth. The mindlessness of these cuts, when it comes to domestic and defense. What is our mission . What is our National Security mission . That is where we should be making the evaluation of what we need, what we must have, and what we can do without, not in the matter in which i have i have met with generals about the subject. This is a horrible way to go about this. This is not about discussing our policy and how can we save jobs. It is about mindless cuts that are harmful to our National Security right now in terms of the training and the rest that we provide for our troops. To go back to the question to review what we spend and how we have raised revenue and how to create growth. It is important to note that these tax bonanzas for special interests are a spending cut. We talk about expenditures for education, health care, and the rest. These are called tax expenditures. If you want to cut spending some of the spenders you could start with, as the president has suggested, are some of these loopholes in the tax code against tax breaks to special interests. You can begin with 38 billion given to big oil as an incentive for them to drill when they can make a trillion dollars in profits over the 10year period. The list goes on and on. When we talk about expenditures look at tax expenditures, too. We made the argument about rates. Were not going to that place. What were saying is if you address the tax expenditure issue, it will limit the amount of deduction that people can take and you will have a fair tax system and you dont have to take the food out of the mouths of seniors and meals on wheels. The strength of our country is in our military, and it is in the health, education, and the wellbeing of the American People. Our budget must reflect that. You can to cut expenditures. Lets start with tax expenditures. Thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] house leaders talked about automatic spending cuts and in the house agenda. This is a half hour. , automatic draconian, in my view, irrational cutsstarting tf the socalled sequester. I did not see any legislation on the floor for next week which would obviate the happening of that event, of the sequester, although i do see that there is some desire, apparently, to make sure that the Defense Department and the department of Veterans Affairs has the ability to manage those cuts in a way that will be least detrimental. I would ask the gentleman, there are of course 12 other excuse me, 10 other appropriation bills , there are 10 other major agencies and multiple departments and offices that will have a problem similar to that of the department of defense and the veterans administration. Is the gentleman aware of any efforts that will be made to accommodate the domestic side of the budget . Mr. Cantor thank you, mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And i would say, mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, the house has acted twice to offer alternatives to what we agree with is a very wrong way to go about cuts. Which is the sequestration measure. But unfortunately both times the senate rejected or refused to take up the alternatives. Im aware the other body is anticipating at least anticipating to at least attempt to vote on an alternative, both of which are protected to fail in the state in predicted to fail in the senate. So id say to the gentleman, mr. Speaker, that hes right in saying that our intent is to try and provide the flexibility for the Defense Department in terms of its appropriations, as well as the milcon bill. And we do so because theres bipartisan agreement around those two bills. And i would say to the gentleman, if bipartisan agreement somehow is reached in other bills, i would say to the gentleman, we certainly would like to be able to take a look at that. But i believe, mr. Speaker, its prudent for us to try and do the things that we can do right now so that we dont have to bear the burden of the wrongheaded way of controlling spending which is that sequestration. I yield back. Mr. Hoyer i thank the gentleman for his comments. Let me only observe that the bills which the gentleman has now discussed for three weeks running, that weve had colloquies, are no longer available to either the senate or the house. He knows that. They were in the last congress and they died in the last congress. There has been no legislation in the 59 days that weve been here, put on this floor, and only the majority leader can put legislation on the floor. No legislation which would have an alternative to the sequester. And in fact, notwithstanding some of the representations, mr. Leader, that have been made, mr. Speaker, there was a bill on this floor on july 19, 2011, which was called cut, cap and balance. 229 republicans voted for that bill. That bill had as its fallback, if the objectives of the bill were not reached, sequester. That was substantially before, many days before the president and through the person of jack lu talk about the making that a part of a piece of legislation that we needed so that we did not default on the National Debt. And for the first time not only since ive been serving the congress, some 32 years, but the first time in history as a result of that action of coming so close to defaulting on the National Debt this country was downgraded by a single point. The gentleman talked about the stem bill that was passed and i voted for, he voted for, the overwhelming majority of democrats and republicans voted for it, to help our economy. That event substantially hurt our economy. Mr. Speaker, the inability to get to agreement on this sequester is hurting the economy. And i will tell my friend that weve offered three times to have a bill considered as an alternative to sequester which cuts spending, raises some additional revenues. I know the gentleman is going to give me a lecture about raising taxes. I understand that. But i would urge the gentleman, let a vote happen on this floor. Let the house as you said in 2010 work its will. Thats what the speaker said he wanted to do. Let us vote on an alternative. Not just blindly go down this road of sequester, not blindly go down this road that the gentleman has just agreed with me and we agreed together, i think most of us agree, the sequester is irrational. It should not happen. In fact, it was put in the bill on the theory that surely we wouldnt let it happen. But in 59 days weve had no bill on this floor. All the gentleman says is a bill thats gone and dead and bury, that we cant consider, that wont make a difference, that will not get rid of the sequester. I regret that, mr. Leader, because i think we can. Frankly we can next week put alternatives on the froor. If you have an alternative, put on the floor. If you have an alternative, put it on the floor. But thats what the American People expect. They expect us to solve problems, and they sent us to vote on policy. Mr. Van hollen, whos the ranking democrat on the budget committee, has asked three times, mr. Leader, to bring a bill to this floor, an amendment to this floor to provide an alternative to sequester. It seems strange that when both of us agree that sequester is wrong, irrational, will have adverse effects, ben bernanke said it would substantially hurt the economy, that we dont provide alternatives, and all we talk about is something we did yesterday actually more than three month, four months ago, that is dead and gone. We need to do something now, and we need to come together in a bipartisan basis. I might say to the leader, weve had four major bills signed into law in this congress by the president. Every one of those bills were passed in a bipartisan basis with an average of 168 democrats voting for it and an average of 124 republicans voting for it. We saw a perfect example, mr. Speaker mr. Leader, on the floor today of making very good policy. How did we do it . We did it in a bipartisan vote. And i suggest to my friend, the majority leader, that we could do that as it relates to the sequester if we would bring something to the floor, have a vote on it and in my view in a bipartisan fashion we could in fact set aside this irrational, negative sequester and move on to a rational, fiscal policy. Id be glad to yield to my friend if he wants to make a comment on it. Mr. Cantor mr. Speaker, i thank the gentleman. First of all, there would not be a bipartisan vote on the democratic suggestion as to how to deal with the sequester. As the gentleman rightfully suggests, that measure will include tax increases. We heard a lot of talk about balance, that we need to approach the situation in a balanced way. Well, the president has enacted 149. 7 billion worth of tax increases for this fiscal year. Sequestration results in 85. 3 billion worth of spending reductions. As you can see, mr. Speaker, the balance is clearly in favor of tax increases. Taking peoples money and then allowing washington to decide how to spend it when most people realize that government is never the one best to spend and allocate someone elses dollars, which is why we insist on having a limited government providing the necessary support and roles as it should and not continuing to take other peoples money and deciding how we spend it. Now, id say to the gentleman, he knows as well as i do that the senate refuses to take up whatever we send them. They refused again and again. So weve got a real problem, that somehow one house does its work. Twice this house has passed bills with alternative measures to address sequestration, and a significant portion of both of those bills, one of which i sponsored, were provisions taken out of the president s, himself, budget. Not spending increases but reductions that the president says are ok but yet still the senate failed to take them up. So theres a meeting tomorrow at the white house, mr. Speaker, and i know the gentleman shares the desire to perhaps have that men meeting make the senate act. The house can produce a plan and has twice to replace this sequester. Now, id say to the gentleman, hes concerned about the economy and so are we very concerned about the economy. Were concerned about the rating agencies outlook agencies outlook on our situation. But i remind the gentleman, mr. Speaker, that the warnings from these rating agencies are not warnings that are wholly addressed by just coming to some deal. Those warnings from the rating agencies are directed at our doing something about the underlying fiscal problem this federal government has which are e mountains of debt caused by the growth and the unfunded liblets in our entitlement programs liabilities in our entitlement programs. And the gentleman knows we failed to come to agreement in 2011 as to how to deal with those unfunded liabilities which is why the sequestration is in place. We got to have that deal on the unfunded liabilities, because thats what those warnings are about, thats what we should be concerned about, not raising more taxes. Those warnings are not about raising more taxes. Its about getting rid of the outofcontrol liabilities that are racked up because of the spending which is out of control. I yield back. Mr. Hoyer i thank the gentleman for his comments. It doesnt get at weve been here 59 days in this congress. Not a single bill has been brought to this floor which will deal with the sequester. Not one. As a matter of fact, weve only met 17 of the 59 days this year. So when my friend laments the fact that the sequester is going into effect and he talks about bills he doesnt deny theyre dead and gone. Senate cant take them up. So many folks want us to read the constitution of the United States. Im for doing that. Its article 1 that gives to the house, as the leader im sure know, the responsibility to raise revenues and to pass appropriation bills. Its the house that needs to initiate legislation, and we guard that pretty jealously. We guard it as we just passed vawa. There was a lot of discussion about vawa having in the last congress that passed overwhelmingly was delayed because very frankly they had some money effect in that bill. We said it was subject, therefore, to objections on our side. We havent met very often and when we do meet the only real bills that are passed are passed in a bipartisan fashion which happened today. And when we talk about balance and i get very frustrated and take somebody elses money. Do you want to take it out of your pocket . Was the constitution of a United States which formed a more Perfect Union designed to take the chinese money or european money and fund our education, our health care research, our highways, our National Security . Of course not. It is our money. Each one of us individually works hard and we apportion a part of our earnings to the common good, to the common defense, to the common investment in our future, in education, in innovation, in infrastructure. Yes, we do that. And i will tell my friend, and he well knows this, i get somewhat frustrated when i hear this. When i served in this congress from 2001 to 2008 when the Economic Policy that was in effect was all your partys Economic Policy, and you cut revenues substantially and you increased spending substantially and we went from surplus to deep deficit. We need to solve that. I agree with the gentleman. We need to solve it, but we need to do it in a bipartisan basis. Thats why i point out the only bills that have of substance that have been signed by the president that werent suspension bills on which we all agree were bipartisan bills which averaged 124 republicans voting for them and average 168 democrats voting for them. Both parties joined together to solve problems. Thats what needs to happen. And i will tell the gentleman he can talk about confidence all he wants, talk about why the rating agencies downgrade us. There were a number of reasons. But the greatest reason was, and they articulate it, Standard Poors articulated, they werent confident that we could Work Together to solve problems. And were not doing that. The gentleman continues to not want a balanced program. Every group, every group that ive seen or read about or talked to people about has said you cannot get from where we are in the deep debt that was created in the last decade to where we need to be, a balanced fiscal and sustainable plan for america for the years to come without addressing both the spending side and the revenue side. The example i use is we are selling a product, mr. Leader, that many of us voted for it and you want to accommodate on the defense side, which cost 23 costs 23, and we are pricing it at 15. No business in america or in the world could survive with that imbalance. We need to bring that in balance, and youre not going to get to the 15 of revenues that were collecting or now maybe 16 or 17 simply by savaging either defense or nondefense spending or entitlements. So i would certainly hope, mr. Leader, that we would come together. You and i have talked about this a lot. People go home and talk about how bipartisan we are going to be. We are prepared and we understand there are going to be things we have to do that we wont like. On your side there will be things to do that you wont like. That will be a compromise. Thats the definition of a compromise. Our country needs it. Americans want it. I would hope that we could in the coming days, not only address the sequester, but address the need over the next 10 years to get this country back to balance where we were in 2000 where we had a balanced budget, the debt was coming down and in fact people were concerned that it was coming down too fast. Unless the gentleman has further remarks, ill yield back. Mr. Cantor i appreciate the gentleman yielding. Mr. Hoyer i yield to my friend. Mr. Cantor the gentleman loves to go back and talk about that period from 2001 to 2008 and the fact that there was too many tax cuts in place and without the control in spending. Mr. Hoyer reclaiming my time, because my point, i tell the leader, is that we didnt pay for what we bought. We kept buying but we didnt pay. I yield to my friend. Mr. Cantor mr. Speaker, i was saying that. Too many tax cuts in place, and i agree with the gentleman, mr. Speaker, not only on the fact that there were tax reductions and cuts in place but the fact there wasnt a control in spending. That is a problem here, mr. Speaker. But ironically, the gentleman has consistently been in support of and just voted to extend 98 of those tax cuts. And so what were saying right now is we got to do something about the spending. You just got 650 billion in tax increases, mr. Speaker, over the course of the next 10 years through the fiscal cliff deal. I just prior spoke about the imbalance. This year, f. Y. 2013, of the amount of new revenues versus the actual spending that is being projected to be reduced in the sequester. I agree, lets get back to balance. Lets go ahead and increase the spending reductions. Washington does have that spending problem. The gentleman agrees. So, you know, again, i think its unfair to say that theres just, you know, no agreement on the fact that we ought to go and reduce tax rates and taxes because the gentleman supports doing that. So lets talk about balance. You know, and we got the highest level of revenues, its been reported that we have the highest level of revenues coming into the federal government this year ever. And the gentleman does know as well the spending is out of proportion in terms of history, in terms of the percentage of g. D. P. So why cant we focus on that . We got to get this economy growing. And the gentleman is correct in saying the government needs to be adequately funded, but we got to take a look at what were funding. Thats what were talking about in replacing the sequester is prioritizing. What are the functions of government . And the sequester, it does cut spending, but wed rather cut it in smarter ways. You know, again, i hear the gentleman talk about hed like to be here on the floor passing bills. We would, too. Get the senate to act. We have a bicameral process here, and the senate has not acted. The white house, the president hasnt even sent up his budget, mr. Speaker. The president has that obligation in law. Has not presented his budget to the house. The senate refuses to do anything. And whats the white house doing right now . The president s been going around the country campaigning for the past two months scarring people, creating havoc. Thats supposed to be leadership . The president says to americans that their food is going to go uninspected and the borders will be less patrolled and unsafe. His cabinet secretaries are Holding Press Conference and conducting tv interviewses, making false claims about teacher layoffs. I just feel that people ought to take a look and say, hey, these sequester spending levels, not the sequester, but the spending levels, and say, in 2009, was food not inspected . Because thats what the claim is, mr. Speaker. That somehow if we were ever to reduce spending at all we couldnt have food inspectors. Did we have a Border Patrol any Border Patrol agents in 2009 . Of course we did. Of course we did. They will be funded at the same levels under the sequester. And thats our point. Replacing the sequester with smart cuts. But the other side, mr. Speaker, and the gentleman and his caucus wont join us in doing that. Because all we hear again and again is raise taxes. And i have said, as the gentleman knows, we cant in this town be raising taxes every three months. Thats just not the way we can get this economy back on track. Did the f. A. A. Shut down in 2009 . Thats the claim. Thats the claim that the president s saying. Shut down the f. A. A. , stop air travel as we know it. Or give us higher taxes. Thats the false choice that this president and his administration are out there hawking. We cant have that. Thats not leadership. Lets come together. I agree with the gentleman, but stop the false choice. Stop the games and lets get it done. I yield back. Mr. Hoyer i thank the gentleman. He said a lot and i could have a lot of comments on that but i will say this, as long as the gentleman believes its only us saying that we need a balanced program, he will oppose it because we are democrats. If the gentleman listens to independent advice all over this country, from all sorts of sources, republicans and democrats, conservatives and liberals, they will say, you need balanced approach. We need to cut spending, we need to restrain spending and we need to balance the cost of what we provide with the income that we have. Every business person, small, medium and large, understands that concept. We have not followed it and we did not follow it in the last decade. I regret the fact that the gentleman doesnt like the president going around the country and telling the truth. Saying what the consequences may well be. Now, are they going to be on march 1 . No, but will they inevitable occur if the sequester stays in place . The answer to that is an emphatic yes. So i think the president is going around the country saying, look, these are the alternatives. And saying that the senate wont act or the president wont act people did not elect me, i will tell you, to make the president act or to make the senate act. They didnt think i could do that. What they did think i could do is make steny hoyer act. And if i were the majority leader, they expected me to have the house act. Even if people didnt agree with me of legislation i put on the floor. But they expect us to do our job , not to cop out, with all due respect, to the fact that the president s not doing something or the senates not doing something. We have a responsibility here in this chamber, the peoples house, as representatives of 435 districts, to do our job. And if the other folks dont do their job, we can lament that, we can criticize them, we can inform the American Public of that. But we cannot say thats why were not acting. So i would hope that next week we would in fact act and bring legislation to the floor and id be, as the gentleman knows, my friend knows, im for a big deal. Im for getting us to that 4 trillion that the simpsonbowles recommended. Because i think that will give real confidence to our economy, really grow businesses and put our country on a fiscally sustainable path and i will a few moments the joint committee looks tat economy. Well show you what the members of Congress Said about the automatic federal spending cuttings scheduled to begin tomorrow. Our coverage includes a News Conference with Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans on the floor discussing a plan to replace the sequester. On the next washington journal, well discuss the automatic spending cuts with Donna Edwards of maryland, whose district includes washington, d. C. Also joining to take your questions is represent randy forbes, a virginia republican, a member of the arm forces committee. Washington journal is live every day. The problem with banning any book is that once you ban one we dont know where it will stop. That road takes us back to totalitarian states. This book has been banned many time, especially in classroom, i think simple simply because a parent doesnt tuns novel. They havent read it. There are cases where school boreds or parents have asked to ban the novel, it turns out they havent read it. They take words or a phrase here and there or they hear a paragraph. Im glad to say in every instance where centership of the novel has happened every instant ive heard of our parents go to schools and say this is important literature and you cant ban because you pick a word or two or a paragraph. In every days that i know of the banning has been overturned. More with him on centership and banned books as book tv and cspan look behind the scenes in albuquerque, new mexico. That is on sunday on cspan2. A joint economic hearing on the economy and job creation. This is a little more than an hour and a half. Good morning, everyone. I would like to call this the first meeting of the joint committeefor the 113th session of dong order. To order. The employment act of 1946 established the committee to make policy recommendations to congress. As the 37th chairman of the committee. I want to congratulation senator amy on becoming vice chair and welcome new and returning members to the committee. I would like to introduce our new members. Representative of minute, of new york, senator roger of mississippi senator of connecticut. And john of maryland. While the United States confronts many problems our most vexing economic challenge is the growth gap and how we close it. The growth gap between this economic recovery and others is significant and intensifies our problems. The growth gap has two interrelated aspects. First by economic measures remains the weakest among recoveries since world war ii. Second, our economys potential to grow over time has slowed. If true, the average rate of growth and private job creation during this recovery of 2. 1 annually and 175,000 new jobs per month are about as good as our economy will ever perform in the future and that is unacceptable. Therefore, its appropriate the first hearing the committee should address this growth gap. While i have job creation have remained weak and what should congress do to boost them . The recovery is indisputable. Real g. D. P. Increased by 7. 5 in three and a half years. In contrast. In all the post war recoveries g. D. P. Increase was 7. 5. It would have to grow at an annual rate at 5. 5 to catch up by the end of president obamas second term. That would be slightly higher than the 5. 4 rate that president reagan achieved. Private payroll employment, that is jobs on main street have increased by only 5. 7 since its cycle low. Had this been average, it would have increased by 9. 4 . The growth gap means the United States should have 3. 9 million more private jobs today than it does. Equally troubling is mounting evidence that the mounting growth rate for potential real g. D. P. In the future has fallen dramatically. In the outlook, the Congressional Budget Office cut the estimate of the real g. D. P. Growth rate to one percentage point below its average since 1950. One point may not sound like much, however, the real economy doubles in 22 years at 3. 3 growth rate. But at that lower, smaller rate, it takes 31. 9 years to double, almost a decade longer. The prospect of a new normal for americas economy in which our growth slows by 1 3 should be a red flag for all americans. During this congress, the committee will go through hearings and research with respect to the growth gap and how to close it. No doubt some of the growth gap may be due to demographic factors. However, even a cursory review of recent history strongly suggest that economic and fiscal policies have played the dominant role. To understand how these policies affect performance lets compare the progrowth policies in the 1980s and 1990s to the slow growth policies during the last decade. During the great moderation under both republican and democratic president s in congresses with split control or republican or democratic. They achieved outstanding results. The size of the federal government shrank. Marginal income tax rates fell. Policy makers focused on reducing the after tax cost of capital for new Business Investment and jobs grew. Monetary policy became real based and predictable. Ignoring the employment half of its mandate, the Federal Reserve focused on price stability. The United States led the world in liberalizing International Trade in investment. Beginning in 2001, under both democratic and republican president s in congress both democrat and split control, the federal government reversed course in large part to terrorist attacks of 9 11. The results have been disappointing. The size of government has grown soaring to 22 of g. D. P. And remaining elevated. Marginal income tax rates were first decreased then increased and in recent years policy makers have focused on the fairness of the tax system rather than its effect on growth. Monetary policy has become discretionary again. The regular tear burdens on businesses has increased generating uncertainty and inhibiting new Business Investment. The United States has fallen behind its Major Trading partners. Today is the perfect time to focus on the growth gap and what we should do about it. Given the historical and legal relationship between the committee and the council of economic advisors, its appropriate two of the most distinguished chairman are with us today as witnesses. With that i look forward to the testimony. I recognize vice chairman for her comments. Thank you very much chairman brady. Its an honor to be here. Im joined by many colleagues from both the house and senate. I look forward to working on some good discussions and hopefully solutions to the budget and economic problems facing our country. I also want to thank our two witnesses. It is a great way to start this hearing with both of you having been former chairman of the economic advisors. Were at a time when congresss energy is focused on sequestration and the solutions to that. While that is not the focus of todays hearings, in many ways its a good starting point for our discussion, not just because of the consequences but because it underscores the need for policies that address our debt challenges without undermining growth. My hope is we can explore some of the bigger pictures for moving our economy forward while discussing specific policies for strengthening the fundamentals, the core engines like entrepreneurship and innovation. As we explore the current landscape, i think its important to remember where we were a few years ago. I sat through hearings in this room as we would hear the unemployment numbers, the difficult situation our country was in. I think back to the first half of 2009 when our country was losing jobs at a rate of nearly 700,000 a month. That is literally equal to the entire population of vermont. Four years later we are adding jobs. Not as many as wed like but weve seen 35 months of job growth. In that time weve also seen promising signs of growth recently in Industries Like housing. Take the january numbers for new home sales. They hit their highest rate in four and a half years, up nearly 16 compared to december. Exporting has been another bright spot with exports reaching a record of 2. 2 trillion last year. I personally spent last week in 30 below wind chill weather around minnesota visiting 30 different businesses, saw warehouses full of crates that said ship to china and saw in our state where we are down to 5. 5 unemployment. What we are seeing with this private sector job growth which is based on exports in our state as well as a skilled work force. These are positive signs but there is more to be done. There are still more than 1 12 million americans out of workand there is no question we have much more work to do. Our focus needs to be on policies that create job creation in the short term while laying ground for prosperity in the long term. If weve learned anything over the last few years, its that america can no longer be a country that churns money. Our financial industry is important but it cant be the basis of our economy. We need to make things and export to the world which we need to work to bring our country back to the brass tacks of innovation and entrepreneurship. I come from a state, i will try not to mention my state too much if you dont mention texas too much. But my state brought the world everything from the peacemaker to the post it note. I have a model i look at how we were able to keep our head above water during this downturn. This isnt a minnesota story. Its an american story. Innovation is the engine that has kept our countrymoving forward since its earlier days. The things i think we need to focus on as we go forward, i hope we can be as bipartisan as possible. Were going to have different views, but as long as we get the right information from our witnesses, i think we can come together which we need to bring our debt down in a balanced way. I think there were good things coming out of the Simpson Bowles commission and the work being done on that balanced approach to bring that debt down. I dont think we can put our heads in the sand. Education, i think we should double our schools. We need to get our kids to science and math. We have so Many Companies looking for welders and tool and die and these are jobs that are there right now that are going unfilled because we have failed to train students in those areas where we have jobs that are good paying jobs. Exports, i mentioned. The president s goal of doubling the number of exports within this five year period is attainable. Regulations, keeping very important regulations in place but going industry by industry and saying what can we do to make things work better so we can compete on an international basis. Reforming our tax code and doing something about Immigration Reform which i think is very doable given the bipartisan work in the senate. Im excited about working with chairman brady and the rest of my colleagues. I look forward to this hearing. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Id like to welcome and introduce our witnesses for todays hearing. Dr. Michael boskin is at the Hoover Institute and professor of economics at stanford. Previously dr. Boskin served on the economic advisors at which point independent counts rated the ce agency as one of the most respected agencies in the federal government. He also chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission on Consumer Price index. Dr. Boskin is author of more than 150 books and is recognized for his research and received the adam smith prize for contribution to economics in 1988. He received his bachelors and masters and p. H. D. At california berkeley. Id like to introduce dr. Austin goolsbee. Previously he served on the council of economic advisors from 2009 to 2011 and led it as chairman. He writes monthly for the washington journal and contributed economic analyst for abc news. Hes also spent time as a special consultant for internet policy for the department of justice and it was lead editor for the journal of law and economics for several years. He earned his degrees in economics from yale university. Graduated from a docket rat in economics. Clearly we have highly respected witnesses. There is an awful lot of wisdom to be tapped today as we look at these issues. Thank you for your willingness to come before the committee. We look forward to your expert opinion. Thank you chairman brady, vice chair. Ive had the privilege of testifying before this committee and working with it since the 1970s. I obviously testified often in my four years as senior chairman when we were cleaning up two financial crisis, the savings and loans and the banks being insolvent. We had the first iraq war, oil shock and a recession. So not totally dissimilar, though not as large a scale as what we went through recently. Obviously we had a horrific recession following the collapse of the Housing Market and the housing bubble and the financial crisis. The recovery has been anemic compared to previous recoveries. Its growing at 4 and employment at 20 as rapidly. The subpar growth is as damaging to Employment Opportunities and skills as the order however deep and severe a recession. The modestly good news is despite the fact the economy has been flat lately and most people expect this quarter to be only slightly positive, most expect the economy to pick up thisyear and into next. That is the forecast as has been for some time. Hopefully they are right but the blue chip is looking at 2. 5 or a higher growth next year. That would still be way below what the economy should be doing recovering from such a deep recession. There are many risk it is economy faces from problems in europe, to joe political issues, deleveraging the private sector, raising cost and uncertainty thathas yet to be written and enforced and so on. And the uncertainty about the feds exit from its monetary policy. But there are good signs. Technology revolution in fracking and bringing energy cost down in the United States and bringing jobs in a wide array of our states. Housing seems to be rebounding and there is lots of cash sitting on the side lines waiting for an improved economic environment and an improved policy environment. I believe that the early policies, the early fed actions, the automatic stabilizers in the tax code and the making capital available to the banks as poorly as it was done was essential to preventing the recession from getting worse flt but much of the policy since then has not been as effective as it could have been. I detail that in my testimony. The marginal tax cuts, the attempted social reengineering of the economy from energy to healthcare to financial services. Whenever their intrinsic benefits and cost created a lot of uncertainty. So i think there are a lot of reasons to believe we have a different course of action is required now. In my opinion, it starts with a strong credible commitment to serious consolidation facing gradually as the economy recovers. That means its got to be permanent and structural. It requires process rules on spending and debt. Progrowth tax reform lower rates on a broad base which all economist agree is desirable would be important to that effort. In the long run we need to get entitlement cost growth under control in a manner that strengthens and preserves our key entitlement programs but prevents them from bankrupting the rest of the government. Simply put were going to have too many people collecting too generous benefits. We should be trimming them at the top and slowing the increase through a variety of matters. Ive calculating that the harm from allowing the projected debt to go. Its not only unsustainable. Its dangerous. It would lead to a generation of lost income for our children and grandchildren on a level of 20 to 30 . We need to get the g. D. P. Heading down. I think there should be in addition to those two things, medium Fiscal Consolidation and tax reform. Minimizing that reducing subsidies to the well off. Budget reform, making programs more effective. Jobs going vacant for lack of training. We have 46 job Training Programs in the federal government. One was added for green energy. It should be shut down. Most of those programs dont even have metrix. We need to eliminate the bad ones, consolidate the hopeful ones, modernize and train people. It will help people at lower cost. There are many examples of that throughout the government. Id be happy to take questions on that. In terms of monetary policy, it need to be more predictable and permanent. I call it rules based, if its not following a clear rule, its working as if it is. Anytime it deviates, there is an emergency reason and so on. You could eliminate the tax rules and Spending Program that leaves everybody uncertainty about whether they will be renewed that jerry rigs all the incentives in the economy. In addition education as well as job training reform, and i might add trade liberalization which im glad to see the president has begun to start about in some dimensions would be important compliments to this but it should be on consolidation on the spending time as the economy recovers. Research shows consolidations do not cause recessions have 5 spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. An economically balanced consolidation is primarily on the spending side. Its not 50 50. I wish the Committee Good luck and progress and i look forward to working with you and hearing your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Its a great honor and i appreciate the invitation. I think the central question that have you raised here today fits in the tradition of the joint Economic Committee where theyve had a long history of democrats and republicans working together, the house and the Senate Working together and i think there are a lot of things that we can agree on not the least of which is our dress code today. We did not coordinate. But if the questioning gets difficult im going to try to look like i were him and direct the questions away from myself. The central question is why is the economy not growing faster after a deep recession . And i think there are three primary reasons for that but before i state those reasons i would like to make one factual observation which is this is not the weakest recovery in memory. It is not the weakest of the last two. The 2001 recovery was substantially slower than this one. What is different about this one is it is not v shaped in the way professor points out in his testimony. It was after the deep recessions of 1975 and 1982. I think there are three reasons why that is. The first is this recession came from the popping of a bubble unlike the 1982 and 1975 recessions and popping bubbles are much more difficult to escape from the grips of than are the other. So in 1982 my dear friend paul voker rose the the Interest Rates rose to over 20 on mortgages. Economic activity slowed dramatically as Interest Rates came down that pinned up demand came right back. That is not having a do a lot of structural transformation of what the economy is doing but going back to what you were doing before. There was a joke headline in the onion newspaper, serious nation demands new bubble to invest in to restore prosperity. Lets not reenact that headline. Its clear as we look at the data as we highlighted in the report when i was serving as the chair that the expansion of the 2000s was democratically outsized in contribution of Housing Construction and personal consuming spending as the key drivers of growth. It was way underweighted as compared to past recoveries and compared to other expansions around the world in Business Investment and export growth. We must shift the economy away we cant go back to the building of Residential Construction and personal consumption spending faster than Income Growth as the two drivers of growth. Those were fueled by a bubble and they arent coming back in the way they were then. So that has taken some time. What that means for the job market . I think its not a secret the performance of the job market is tied to how much faster growth is than productivity. Productivity of our workers grows about 2 a year. Anytime growth gets above 2 , you have to hire workers or add hours to meet that kind of demand. If the growth remains in the 2 orbelow the job market is going to remain stagnant. The good news is that the forecast are that growth would get back up in the 2 or higher range in the immediate term. I fear that the impact of the sequester would cut. 5 to 1 off the growth rate and would again put us back into the circumstance in which growth is not fast enough to shrink the Unemployment Rate. That instead of unemployment shrinking, it would be rising again. The second factor that has made this not a v shape recovery, is were overcoming the worst Housing Market in history. If you look at Research Housing and construction are the most cyclical component of the economy. They have a much outsized importance for the shortrun business cycle. The normal coming out of a recession is at least a third related to new construction. We got overbuilt in the bubble with 6 million vacant homes, construction fell close to nothing. Its quite understandable why the overall growth rate of the economy has not come back in the short run as rapidly as in past because we couldnt go back to getting anything from construction. The good news is that the long nightmare of housing in many if not most markets appears to have turned the corner. So we may start to get some contribution from that. Third, the evidence is that financial crisis and big d leveraging take a major toll on growth. The Economic Growth report of this year compares its experience of the lab boar labor market to experience of other countries that have had financial crisis and the u. S. Appears to be doing a fire bit better than average for that circumstance. All of those are just to say its not fast enough, but i think it is understandable why it wasnt v shaped. Why it looks more like the 2001 recovery than the 1984 recovery. Lastly, i would like to say two things i believe the data do not suggest are predominantly to explain why growth has not been faster. The first is i do not believe the data supports the view that regulation or policy changes over the last three years are the predominant reason why growth has not been v shaped recovery. If you look at things like the accumulation of money on the Balance Sheet of corporations and a lack of willingness to invest, that pervades all the advanced economies of the world. That is happening in countries that did not pass a health plan, that have not had any changes of their regulatory regime, so anybody who is arguing that regulation is the driver has to explain why the pattern is consist ant cross these other countries. Second, the way economist normally measure the impact of regulation on growth when they say for example that the 1977 Clean Air Act affected manufacturing, they compare counties where it applies strictly to counties writ doesnt. Where it doesnt. They compare those industries and company that is are affected to those that are not by size, by sector, etc. If you do that now, there is little evidence that those regulatory policies are the primary driver. The second factor that i believe the evidence does not suggest is the cause is the short run deficit. Most of the short run deficit has been caused by the downturn, not caused the downturn and while i 100 agree and have for a long time been an advocate of a long term Fiscal Consolidation i think you need only look at the g. D. P. Evidence in the United States in the Fourth Quarter or in europe where they are engaged in dramatic austerity to realize there is a tension between trying to cut too much in the immediate term and the growth rate. I think the normal channels by which fiscal contractions can be go through the Interest Rate that you satisfy investors and make them more confident in the plan so the Interest Rate come down. We are facing epically low Interest Rates. It is hard for me to understand mechanism which fiscal contractions would be in this environment. I believe there are many things we can agree on whether on long run Fiscal Consolidation, on investing and training innovationas the keys to growth. I hope we do not something that would be a mistake in the short run on a purpose that is something other than reestablishing a growth strategy. Thank you. Thank you both for the testimony. Doctor, as we look at the growth gap, ways to close it and more importantly solutions, you mentioned recently the generational damage by this high spending to g. D. P. Ratio and about the need for Fiscal Consolidation. Economists generally believe that federal spending should be capped and controlled relative to the size of the economy. The challenge is how best to do that. Id like your advice. Weve developed over the past year and a half legislation called the map act that address the spending caps. The difference from past efforts is we used two slightly different we think smarter metrix to do that. One is a nonenter spending. That which is controlled by congress, both discretionary entitlement type spending. The goal clearly there is to be able to reduce what we can reduce without adding pressure on us to push the fed to keep Interest Rates political low. The second, the denominator is potential g. D. P. Rather than estimated rolling average. Its not as cyclical. Congresses cant spend as much in the good times nor do they have to cut quite as much in the bad times. As we go forward trying to find solutions on gradually lowering the size of our government relative to the economy, are those metrix good ones to work off of . I think youre definitely headed in the right direction. I think its important we allow the automatic stabilizers to work. I mentioned them as the major cause. I agree the quantitatively they are a large part of the deficit. So thats important. I do believe there are two other things that are worth considering. One is that for good purposes or other, we often wind up doing things that are like spending but dont count as spending. We regulate. When the government says put this on your car and therefore, the Auto Companies do it and charge people higher prices for their car, that may have a good benefit cost ratio but it doesnt show up as spending the money. So regulations is a substitute and tax expenditures are a substitute for spending. So you would need to have some complementary legislation or safety valve to prevent that you could tighten if all of a sudden the spending cap started to bind and edging into regulation and tax expenditures. The other is when you look at spending, there is this fundamental fact of arithmetic we cant get around that present discount of taxes has to equal future spending plus the National Debt. The government has to pay its bills now or later. A dollar of borrowing now means the interest tomorrow has to be raised to pay off the interest. So with that in mind, its very, very important that the spending caps be reasonable and bind and there is some mechanism by which we dont, even with reasonable spending caps, start continuing to accumulate more debt as well. So there is an issue whether you need something on the deficit and debt side simultaneously with spending, spending minus taxes. You need to control two to control three. But youre at the fundamental core, the first thing we need to get under control is spending. We can argue. I think we would agree that should be Done Gradually but in the long run these projections, even if you shave them for optimist assumptions are really tremendously harmful. To take the path of spending as the o. M. B. Projects for the president s policies with reasonable assumptions which includes the future projected growth of medicare and Social Security. Means were going to have a wide swath of the population paying tax rates at 70 paying for it with higher income taxes, not just the well off. Its hard to imagine in a generation from now we can have a successful economy with a large fraction of americans being a minority partner in their own labor. So you are right that spending is the fundamental thing. The other thing you mightwant to give thought to the long run about whether have you a recalibration exercise or think about how demographics interact with it. But you are in the right place. Thank you both. I did see a few Common Threads in your testimony and i want to start with the elephant in the room and go through questions quickly. On tuesday ben bernanke testified before the Senate Banking committee and he said the congress and the administration should consider replacing the sharp mode spending cuts required by the sequestration with policies that reduce the federal deficit more gradually in the short term. The head wind facing the recovery while addressing the imbalances in the federal budget. Do you agree with his statement . Yes. If you could keep your statement short. I notice you talked about a fazed in reduction. Do you think there is a better way to do this than the sequestration . I think there is a better way. But i want to make sure this year the total affect on outlays is going to be between 5 and 40 and 45 billion. That is one quarter of g. D. P. Its hard to believe this year the sequester would be a major event. Next year it starts adding up. So it would be better to have it shaped like this, there is no doubt. But its difficult to do that when were living in a world where every two months we have a new set of negotiations. I agree. Many of us would have liked to do a bigger thing at the end of the year but we will proceed now and have the opportunities in the next few months. I know in the senate and the house want to get this done. I want to follow up on one thing i thought was interesting and that is the number of businesses that have accumulated money right now that we would like them to invest in our country. Part of it is the problem with the uncertainty with changes all the time. You rightly noted this is not just our country that has this problem. What i wanted to get at is how you think we can unleash this money and get it invested . In my view, the reason its accumulating in the u. S. And other countries fear about the World Economy is has a recovery taken hold. For all of the discussion of our growth rate being modest. At 2. 5 , thats about the fastest of all the advances economies in the world, which is a sad state of affairs. Its been a tough period. So i think uncertainty about overall world Economic Growth and second fear over whether there will be another major financial crisis led by problems coming out of the european banking sector. I think those two things hang over the Investment Decisions of big firms. And really we can only address that part through macroeconomic management and trying to persuade the europeans to confront their problems. I think on the micropolicy side, investment tax incentives i think have some impact in an environment like this on the decision if youre going to invest, where do you want to invest. I think putting a focus on in some of the sectors getting skilled workers and trained workers that are in our language complementary to the capital is quite important. Because youve seen in hightech manufacturing and others, they havent been able to do that. And the third i think there is a confidence element that as growth gets going, you will see more pressure like what youve seen with apple and others that investors go to the firms and say either use the money for investment or pay out the money and we will use it for investment but dont just is it on the money. I want to follow up on one of the things you made. I was picturing myself telling the Small Business owners in minnesota that you need workers that are complementary to your capital. I think it is right on in terms of trying to encourage our school, from the High School Level on, to train workers. I think manufacturing is one of our spots right now. We do not have enough people going into welding. We need more women doing it. We need more people doing it. There is a big effort in minnesota to recruit more women to the manufacturing floor because of job openings. If you could briefly talk about your views on this and maybe in the second round i will ask about your ideas on consolidation. I agree with those statements that manufacturing has been one of the bright spots. It has been pretty clear. In the data, the u. S. Has got to shift a more exportoriented growth model. The biggest export market for the u. S. Is in the manufacturing sector. Most of what we export our manufactured goods. In those cases, especially in minnesota, those issues of finding structural mismatch and fixing it are important. It behooves us now, at a time when i think cyclical unemployment is the dominant factor nationwide. Very soon, as the Unemployment Rate comes down, structural unemployment will be what remains. We have already seen the weakest parts of the job market being the drop out of the labor force and a group of people who have been unemployed for a very long period, these skills will be a forefront issue. The thought were going to cut into investments like that is shortsighted. Thank you very much. Thank you. You touched on longterm, structural unemployment. We have created the vast majority of jobs that have been service jobs. A very small percentage were science, technology, engineering and math. We know we have disparities growing and every job is not the same. We could have zero unemployment and people could be struggling paying their bills. What do you think is the severity, in a global sense, that we are increasingly moving away from those things we need to invest to increase our Global Competitiveness in terms of innovation, tradable goods, and that type of thing . How big of a factor do you think the Unemployment Rate we are seeing right now is a function of us not being as competitive and as skilled as we need to be as a people . I think it is a substantial part of our problem, both shortterm and longterm. People are not getting jobs now. 3. 5 million job vacancies. They are not all computer programmers. Welders, etc. That is partly a problem of our Education System and the opportunities, private and governmental, to retrain yourself. Need to modernize these jobs programs. I think we can get a lot better out of it for less money and help people a lot more than we do now. Spending should not be the metric, it ought to be, how people get jobs again. In the long term, it is a larger problem. If the unemployment comes down in the next two or three years, what remains will be primarily structural. I think there is a tendency, when firms are hit with really rapid, sharp adjustments, they make deeper cuts, including stuff that is accumulated. They tend to shed a lot of labor than they might have in previous downturns. They pushed their remaining workers and become more productive. All of that is interactive. There is something major to it. I think it is a major issue. I think it is not appreciated that the u. S. s competitiveness problem has not principally been on the productivity side. We remain the most Productive Work force in the world. We only got more productive during the recession. The long run competitiveness of the u. S. Economy is pretty strong. We have gone through a heavy, cyclical unemployment time. It is something we ought to think about. There are a lot of different sectors and jobs that have never faced foreign competition that have become tradable good. That leaves a lot of tough adjustments. We should make quality investments. I think that professors point is well taken. Lets do those things that will get people jobs and sustain them in their jobs. The advance of technology, lets not overly dreadful is it. If they had said in 1920, how many phone lines would exist today, they would have said that is impossible because every man, woman, and child in america would have to be a telephone operator. The fact that they do not need to be did not put everyone out of a job gradually as we trained for other things, we got more skilled. There is no reason we could not shift again. Thank you. Thank you. It is good to see both of you here today. In your testimony today, you suggested congress could help the Housing Market recovery by facilitating finance, refinancing for people unable to take advantage of low rates because by facilitating to people to convert vacant homes into rental properties, it was interesting what you said about housing. Housing sometimes is put on the back burner. For my constituents, it is a big deal. They have lost a lot of wealth with the recession. Could you explain the actual benefits to the economy of allowing borrowers to refinance their mortgages down to the historic low Interest Rates . Yes. In the city of chicago where i live, the impact of the housing downturn has been devastating. A lot of cities in the United States, as well as a lot of suburban areas, this has weighed on growth in a substantial way. The benefit of refinancing is simple. As the professor discussed in the case of taxes, the most effective tax cuts are those that are long lived and have permanent changes to peoples income. We have epically low rates but if you are under water with your mortgageyou cannot go refinance at the bank. You are paying an Interest Rate well above what the market rates are. This has been noted by chairman ben bernanke. If people could simply refinance at the market rate, as they are now, it would be literally, for the average homeowner, thousands of dollars a lower payment per year that would go straight into their pockets. It would be the equivalent of a 30year tax cut for them of thousand dollars a year. That is substantial. It is not just pure stimulus. The incidents in the short run of spending the money for people who are massively liquidity restraint and hurting, trying to figure out how to pay their bills each month, that tends to be higher than for the banks currently sitting on reserves and for the mortgage owners. That could have a positive impact. You said a lot that was very interesting. You talk about the sequestration possibly cutting 1 of the growth rate. It was suggested it would be a certain amount, 2 and above. Talk about that. We had a policy hearing the other day where the professor, a top economist, talked about the very subject. He believes even a month of sequestration would be like creating a crater in our economy. I want to have your comments. The professor and i disagree a little bit on what the multiplier would be of the spending on the economy. If you take forecasters like mackerel advisers, they anticipate the direct impact of spending is maybe 25 basis points, two tenths of a point. The question is what other effects does it have . I think that leaves it up to be higher. I do not think this is as big as what the fiscal cliff would have been, which would have driven us into a recession. In my view, this will cut the growth rate and by a enough that we drop below 2 so there is a decent chance the Unemployment Rate starts going back up again instead of coming down. That is where i would characterize it. I think it was said it would take quite a stretch to make this into a major macroeconomic event. It is literally about a quarter of a percentage point direct spending. Economists are not sure in an expansion with a high debt ratio where that spending will be off spent, whether the multiplier is slightly negative, 0. 6, 1. 3, the incoming Obama Administration used 1. 7 in the midst of a deep recession. If you to that, which i believe is wholesome, there is a range. It is a range of disagreement among economists. That would get us up to maybe to. 4 . Even the most of what has been used in washington recently, it is a minor macroeconomic event. It is not trivial with respect to some things. It is disproportionate to the military. Some people will get disrupted. Overall in the economy, my best judgment would be it would be a quarter of a percent or slightly less. This is an important hearing because i believe our economy has a long way to go to reach its full potential. You had mentioned the current gets to 80 and our net debt, leaving out Social Security the Social Security surplus, our growth that is well over it you are increasing the risk of a sudden, abrupt loss of confidence and a dramatic rise in Interest Rates that requires such a wrenching change in the budget position that you run into these long, depressed growth episodes. That is by former fed member and three other prominent macroeconomist. The only honest answer is we cannot be sure. If you are headed toward an iceberg, you ought to change course. You ought to not see say how close can i get. We need to start getting spending bending down and get the jet gdp ratio not only ratioze the debt gdp at 50 over the longterm. As Interest Rates normalize, how much will these payments increase . What are the trade offs as a larger share of revenues have to go to paying off interest . That is another important point. Cbo projects that the interest costs were the next decade will almost on drupal quadruple. That does not include one of these abrupt loss of confidence episodes in the meantime, which is possible. The Interest Payments are going to be crowding out other outlays, other activity. Higher Interest Rates will eventually start to crowd out investment. We need that investment to generate jobs and increases in wages. It is a serious problem. We have had an unusual. With the said for some good reasons and some not. Ive been clear that the only great i can give them so far is an incomplete. I was a fan of their earlier policies. I have not been a family fleet. They have replaced the credit markets with himself, deciding to keep Interest Rates close to zero. That has enabled the budget to look better than it was. That is not why they did it, but it is a byproduct. If we normalize the budget for that, looking what it would look like a closer to full employment, tax revenues would be relevant obvious storage average of gdp, for example. Spending would come down a little bit on things like Unemployment Insurance and so on. If we look at that, enter us is to become a big issue. It is increasingly leading the country. It is now held abroad by pension and insurance companies. It is a big problem. That is an extra reason we need to get the debt down. The effect on Interest Rates will primarily reflect what the budget position is. Is it a surplus, as this are brady engine question mark as mr. Brady mentioned . Thank you. Representative delaney question ma . I want to thank you and the vice chair for your opening comment, which as someone who is new to congresson overly constructive and bipartisan to congress i found overly instructive and bipartisan. I think the point that is often overlooked when we are talking about our deficit is the fact we do not borrow from ourselves. Other countries like japan that had been able to maintain high debts borrow from themselves. They do not have Market Forces that affect their Interest Rates. It is not just controlled by ourselves. This is that is why it is so important for us to deal with this now while we have the flexibility to reform some of our entitlement programs in a smarter way then what will inevitably happen if we do not deal with it. I want to shift my question to tie into some of the comments that mr. Hannah made. It seems to me that is one of the central issues this country faces, and it started 20 or 30 years ago when we entered a global and technologyenabled world, which did change the face of employment in this country. While we talk a lot about tax policy and the size of government, i worry we do not talk enough about what the future competitive situation of this country is. We have seen cyclical Employment Trends, the trends around the average american have been consistent. They have been down. If youre competitive, you create jobs that have a decent candidate living. If you are not, you create jobs that have a deteriorating standard of living. It seems to be reforming immigration and 6 billion people wake up and largely want to come here. ,aving a Natural Energy policy or lack thereof. Not doing things in education there has never been a stronger correlation then there is now between having a good education and getting a job. Not investing in our infrastructure and not creating enough avenues for the significant amount of private capital that is accumulating to invest in our economy and shoulder some of the burden that government is having to shoulder. I worry about these things as it relates to our longterm competitiveness. My question is how do we think about the role of government in light of what i think is a changing economic landscape for the country question mark a landscape for the country . A landscape that is defined by texan knowledge he defined by technology. How do we think about this landscape in order to make us more competitive so we can reverse the Employment Trend . My grandmother lived in waco, texas, and she used to say to me whenever i complain about anything, 80 of the world does not care about your problems and the other 20 are glad your cup are glad. If you are thinking how long will we need to wait before the government solves our private sector competitiveness problem, i think the answer is forever. If you were waiting for the fed for the government to fix it, you would do best to remember that the vast majority of what happens with the competitiveness of Us Enterprises has nothing to do with the government. Policy is only setting the framework that that is operating in. The government has for many decades played an important function through direct and in direct support of recent and indirect support of recent innovation that have been fundamental to the growth of us industries. The economic infrastructure of the country is quite important. You can disagree about individual job Training Programs, but there is no question in my that overall federal support through Financial Aid and training have been crucial in keeping the roof keeping the workforce the most productive in the world. We also need to have things like a national Energy Policy a the potential drop of energy cost can be a big boon to us manufacturing. It behooves us to take advantage of the new discoveries while being mindful that we have got to do that in a way that is safe. I think it is in those types of broadbased things that the government can play a more important role, rather than in companiesly ric making u more competitive. We agree this is something that private sector primarily does. The government plays a supporting role. Precompetitive research and development lets take the extreme case am a basic physics. They are not going to do it so it has to be done through nsf and things of that sort. That needs to stop short of outright industrial policy where we are subsidizing specific firms. Education is important. The key difference between austin and i is we i would draw the line a little shorter than he would. He would have a larger government. I would be very concerned about the effectiveness. I would be concerned that the larger it got the less effective they got. As the government is playing this role, the larger it gets, it does crowd out the Public Sector. Stated local government is 50 of gdp versus 30 the larger it gets, the less on balance, the more difficult time the rest of the economy will have because it has to pay taxes and other things to support size of the government, which revise those incentives to work and save and invest. Thank you. I do not mean to interrupt. With both pending, i want to make sure we get as many as possible. Thank you. I asked my staff each day to prioritize my memos and i have to work off this first one. Despite tuesdays loss to minnesota, the hoosiers [laughter] thank you. We appreciate that. That is my priority. I never thought i would be from a football powerhouse. The cubs still stink. As a lifetime longsuffering cubs fan, that is an area where dr. Goolsby and i have suffered greatly. Dr. Boskin, i was interested in your comment, which what i would like to which i would like to go to more detail. You said economically balanced is not 50 50 between spending and taxes. Simpsonbowles came out with the three to one ratio between spending and taxes, yet the administration continues to insist that any kind of long term deal will put us on the wrong that will put us on the wrong track has to be 50 50. What should that ratio be . You said it should not be 50 50. What do you think it should be . Would youee, how respond to that . The successful ones have been five dollars or six dollars of actual spending cuts, not hypothetical future once. That does not mean it has to be exactly that. It could be a bit smaller or larger. The us may have slightly different circumstances, but it suggests it is primarily on the spending side. The evidence also, from economics research, suggests tax hikes are more likely to cause recessions and spending cuts. There are many studies that suggest that. There is a study by one of austins colleagues when he first joined the economic advisers suggesting what they would call the output multiplier is high for tax increases. Tax increases be dangerous in the short term. I think the mix for economic reasons there are many other considerations. People care about the size of government as a philosophical issue. People care about the distribution of income, but as a Macro Economic issue, it should be overwhelmingly on the spending side. Two things on this. First, the evidence professor austin is siding is based citing is based on the circumstance that is different than what we are facing now. Our fiscal challenge is nothing more or less than the population is aging and Health Care Costs are rising, so that if you just advance forward the baby boom to their retirement with the existing policy that we have known about for 40 years, it applies it implies that government size will get bigger than it ever was. Either you have got to cut those promises or raise revenues higher than they have ever been to cover them. Those are fundamentally different than the experiments that are in this evidence. Eigha two tos legays out one ration. Two to one ratio. If you add all of these things together, so far we are at about the two to one ratio that was in simpsonbowles. That strikes me as a perfectly appropriate starting point that we have got to balance these things against. At the end of the day, if we do the 4. 5 trillion dollars in cuts over 10 years that Simpson Bowles recommend, the total would be to do one or three to one spending cuts to tax revenue seems totally appropriate. 35 seconds. Dr. Boskin . It is important to recognize two things. This is not primarily an aging population problem. Democracies are very large. We are making them more generous as they go along relative to the cost of living. Some people might say we ought to have those be proportionate to the size of the economy, but the i original mission of Social Security was to provide a measure of security against old age. If i were to collect Social Security at the right time, i would be adding twice the Poverty Level justin Social Security payments. We cannot keep rejecting projecting. I do not believe 70 years from now is a promise. It is a big increase if you provide something for them. We have to get these programs under control. With simpsonbowles, there are many good things in there. I supported a large faction of them. They did not deal with health care. That is a big issue. That is a large driver of future debt. Representative maloney . Wax thank you. I would like to commend you on your new position. I also would like to welcome a new member on the democratic skype democratic side, mr. Delaney from maryland. He has been a successful businessman and will bring an important perspective to this committee. Locum our two pannus and of course welcome our two panelists and thank you for your service. The real question for our government is the sequestration, which kicks in with an 85 billion cut. It is estimated that this will result in a loss of over 700,000 jobs. Chairman bernanke testified yesterday in the house of representatives. Although we have been gaining jobs over 35 months, roughly 6. 1 million in the private sector, 5. 5 million of nonfarm payrolls, but the government lost. 6 million jobs. He testified that the sequestration was a problem, not only besides having an adverse effect on jobs and incomes, but would lead toage less actual deficit reduction. Go the whole purpose of sequestration is deficit reduction. He is testifying it will slow that because of the impact on jobs and incomes. There has been testimony today that the impact on gdp will be roughly a cordy of a percentage point. Roughly a quarter of a percentage point. I would like to hear your comments in relation to what chairman bernanke was saying, that the idea of phasing it in overtime, having targeted reductions, the democratic the nardi keeps putting forward democratic minority keeps putting forward closing loopholes. Lets not keep dredging money back into the economy tom rather than putting them back welfare. This is turned down by the republicans. There was an article this week in one of the papers where Speaker Boehner is quoted as saying in terms of the tax debate because we all support tax restructuring that he would take closing loopholes if given a lower rate for taxes. But it seems to me that closing some of these tax loopholes why were giving tax breaks breaks to companies that move overseas and take our jobs is beside me if you are going to get a tax break give it to someone who is providing a job in america. Also, the tax subsidies are 40 to really Successful Oil companies that are making a lot of money. Why are we subsidizing a company that is making money . It seems to me closing these loopholes and lowering the deficit will be a better approach than closing loopholes and getting a lower tax break. I like i would like mr. Response, spots, and yours, dr. Boskin. I think i am more in the camp that the impact on sequestration will be a half a point to a full point off of the growth rate. I think that will be enough to set the labor market back. On the tax loophole point, what professor boskin said in his testimony, that there is a whole lot of spending that is done through the tax code, is correct. If you cut the loopholes, it is not accurate to think of that as tax increases. By that logic, we should be dealing viewing cutting of tax loopholes as spending cuts. I do not see that there is any problem with changing the form of the spending cuts to be in a more rational direction. I would hope we would get it into a. Where the economy will be recovering more weekly into a period where the economy will be recovering more quickly. I would like, with your permission am a representative , inbell and senator leahe that order. The title is why Economic Growth is weak and what should congress do to boost them. Them. We cannot do too many things at once. Keeping your number one thing you think we should do to boost job creation and Economic Growth and one thing you think we should avoid. I would avoid any major tax increase. The first thing i would do is try to have a credible commitment to serious Fiscal Consolidation as the economy faced and. That would mean changing indexing formulas come a altering structural features of programs, not just cutting a few billion off of one program. Fiscal consolidation getting spending down as the economy recovers. . Dr. Goolsbee putting investment in the workforce is is the most important thing in the short run. The thing to avoid would be anything that is going to have a significant negative impact on incomes and wellbeing of the broad middle class of the country over the next six to 12 months. Both of those are pretty broad. And thats been in training . Specifically, federal r d spending we should not just not cut it, we should increase it. Investments in economically important infrastructure, which are not all roads and bridges a lot of the shipping, container ports, and that kind of infrastructure is important. The thing you said we should avoid is what . Tax increases on the middle class would be one. Things that are depressing the wages of the middle class. The biggest example would be things that would increase taxes on the middle class, the stuff were doing on the housing front can be thought of in that vein. Are presented of duffy . Representative duffy . I am concerned about the Unemployment Rate of our youth. 23. 5 , 16 years old. 2024 years old have an Unemployment Rate of 25 , higher than the national average. Are you concerned about it . What impact does that have on the life skills that our kids learn at this important age . You are exactly right. It is a major even though it is limited to that group it is a major problem. Not being in the workforce means they are not acquiring the skills. They are being left behind. What schools they have learned in high school or parttime jobs is deteriorating. It is important we have a robust economy. We have talked about how to create that in the short run. I also think we need to dramatically improve our k12 educational system. Injecting competition is one thing that can be done. So that they wind up at the beginning of their careers with skills that are better matched. Rm theseo, we refer hio programs we have spent a lot of money on. Sadly, and i have published on the subject that i am about to describe, the evidence suggests that the negative dynamic you are describing is persistent and damaging. If you come out of school unit. Out of school in a period where it is hard to get a job or you are forced to take a lower level job then you should taste on your background come up that sticks with you background, that sticks with you, partly because you get trapped in a negative way. I think it is critically important. The most important way to do that is to get the overall growth of the economy up. I think youth unemployment is one of the weakest and scariest parts of the labor market. In that age range, 16 to 19, 20 to 24, are they the higher earners are lower in our economy . It depends where you are in the skill distribution. For 16 to 19, you have seen an uptick. You would agree on average our younger individuals make less money. Right. So if we want to improve the opportunity for the youth in our country to make sure they learn the skills that are necessary to be successful on a career track, can we grow more opportunity for them, create more jobs, if we could just raise the minimum wage . I think the minimum wage has offsetting effects. It may raise the incomes of some, but it made this employ others. It tends to discipline dis employ those with the lowest skills. It is a big concern, but raising the minimum wage is not the most effective way to deal with this problem. You talked about the growth of thijobs. If we raise the minimum wage, with that grow jobs . Wha the minimum wage has tra offs. Some people, it would raise their wages make it harder for them to get a job. The others, it would raise their income. The tradeoff is how much do you think that affects the overall income my question is very specific. Will it grow jobs it could. It depends if you believe that the total income is going to rise for low and middle income people. That could grow jobs, yes. If we increase minimum wage, that means more of our Small Businesses or manufacturers will have more opportunity and the youth in our community . I position is the minimum wage does several things, not just one thing. Just looking at the one thing is the incorrect way to look at it. I am looking at the one thing with regards to job growth. There are two factors. One is what is the direct impact the the wage of the people who cannot get a job. On the people that are still employed, their ink rub their income goes up. What is the macro effect . It may outweigh invest in our work fasforce d it would create opportunity for our youth in our community . It could and it might not. We can continue this discussion. Tank you, mr. Duffy. , mr. Duffy. Nk you i want to thank dr. Boston and dr. Goolsbee are being here. Dr. Boston and dr. Goolsbee. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you, chairman, and thanks to both of you for joining us today. Dr. Boston, i wanted to talk about tax reform. Dr. Boskin, i wanted to talk about tax reform. We need some kind of tax reform come a especially some kind tax code simplification. In this committee, just a few months ago, we had a gentleman that had a phd in the tax code system, and we asked him if he did his own taxes, he said no. He said because there is no way i could possibly know whether i was correct. That is indicative of how Many Americans feel. There is a broad consensus among republicans and democrats in both houses of congress that a simplified approach to the tax code would be better. We need some kind of tax reform. There is not broad bipartisan consensus on what that ought to look like, at least in the sense that some are less inclined than others to say that we need a tax reform package that would yield more revenue. Most would agree that as long as we are within the world of saying we are statically scoring something. If we can assume we are going o be neutral, maybe we would be better off reforming the tax code, simplifying it, and leaving it revenue north shore revenue neutral. Some would suggest that would stimulate Economic Growth. Leaving us free to see whether or to what extent it did lead to more revenue as a result of Economic Growth occurring in the wake of passing of that reform package. You agree that would be a good idea . I think it is an excellent idea, as long as it is primarily broadening the base and lowering the rates. I think a tax reform that raised tax rates be bad tax reform. We have not talked much about Corporate Tax reform or Small Business, but so many successful Small Businesses, 3 of Small Businesses pay on the personal form. Broader base, lower rates would be good for their incentives. We have the highest corporate rate in the world. About 39 . The effective rate, when you account for deductions and exemptions, is lower am a in the high 20s. Moving in this direction could be good for the economy. I believe that if it was accurately scored, at least over time, it would raise more revenue than is being forecast and the models. If we lower the rates and broaden the base, with that also have the impact of stabilizing it . To my understanding, our income tax system brings in about 18. 5 of gdp on average. We have peaks and valleys within that. In 2011, we were in a valley of about 14. 5 . At times we have gone over 20 , but generally do not go higher. Could lowering the rates and broadening the base reduce a more stable coat . It would. The steep regression regression steep progression, they have larger tax, collect more. It becomes more volatile. The place to see it most is my home state of california, where we have the most volatile, progressive income tax. We get into this awkward situation where we wind up having the revenues flow in, we spend that, they protect more, the crisis hits, we rely on Capital Gains and Stock Options across silicon valley, the revenues collapse, it is hard to cut spending. We wind up not being able to fund basic benefits for people that are hurting. Tough cycle. That is why i ultimately tend to come to the conclusion that where there is not consensus on everything, we ought to look where there is consensus. There seems to be political consensus that we need tax reform in the form of simplification. A be we could out with something revenue neutral and see where it takes us. That would leave subsequent congresses free to plus or minus down. If i can ask one more question as my time is expiring of course. Go ahead. In your testimony, dr. Boskin, you mentioned the need for permanent structural changes, not just a specific dollar cut, while discussing a credible commitment to deficit reduction. Can you speak to us briefly on the importance of maintaining our nations credibility in deficit reduction package is and why it is that markets are not going to be satisfied with cuts . It turns out that if you look at the history of these budget negotiations i have been involved in several and advised on others sometimes the cuts evaporate later. Sometime tax policies change later also. That tends to happen less frequently. If you cut tax rates, there is a much bigger better than small changes in spending. I think what people want to see in financial markets, about what the environment is going to be for investments that are paying off five years and 10 years come a lot of that should be going on in the private sector he mentioned energy, natural gas, that is going to require firms investing millions. They have to have some notion of what the tax payments are going to be. Credible means that the rules are changing and they are harder to reverse than just the typical single appropriations bill if the makeup of Congress Changes and so on. Tax rules, indexing formula, retirement agies eased in overtime phased in over time. Ofthese are the kind os permanent structural reform you are referring to . Yes. Cut 10 billion. It may happen once or it may not end the following year it is up for debate again. Thank you. I had one last question as we grapple with Immigration Reform in the congress. If you could talk, each of you, about how you do this from an economic standpoint. One of the parts i have been working on with senator hatch i have a bill called i squared it basically makes it easier for students from other countries when they study in our universities that they are more easily accessing a green card when they get an advanced degree in science, math, technology. We are also doing more with the on the hp one visas hv1 vis as. They have another program called start up 3. 0. If you could talk a little bit about how this fits in with the overall economy. We have been focusing on job training, which is a major part of this. Our bill as 1000 in fees for each of these visas. Add money is going to go directly to stand aged asian to train our students to education to train our students. I am a strong advocate of Immigration Reform. Three key components to that would be the green card provision youre talking about. It is silly we have these great students that come from abroad, stanford, chicago, and then we send them home. We make it hard for them to stay. They should be working here in helping us grow our economy. The thesis we tend to focus a lot on the problems of people who are at the lower end of the income scale, but we should not neglect technology jobs. That is the lace where the economy is growing and can continue to go we need a sensible guestworker program. It is the case that we have been refreshed numerous times by wastes in immigration in our society. One of the beautiful things about america is how diverse we are. If we are smart and we have an immigration policy that strengthens the opportunity for higher skilled people to stay here and improves the opportunity for people with lower skills, it could do so again. These problems with Social Security and medicare and the slowing growth of the labor force, unless our birth rates change, we are probably going to need to have some more immigration. One of my favorite statistics as to 30 of Nobel Laureates were born in other countries. You go back in time and this has been a major part of our innovation. It has built america. Rank you for your support and leadership on this issue. We talked a lot about this issue when i was in the administration and we should keep talking about it now. The president hasnt sourced that. I championed several of the ideas you mentioned start abuses that you mentioned. Start up thesis and the green card policy. You do not have to look very far either in the Research Literature or talking to Business People to recognize that immigrants have made not just an important contribution to the legacy of who we are as a nation, but to the economy. My friend said that 50 of the companies that one company has funded have at least one founder that were born outside of the United States. They are big job creators. I doing some of these things, we could have a positive impact. On h one b h1b visas, they have the complication that you are tied to one employer. Making changes on that i think is a good idea, as well as expanding the number. I wanted to thank both of you, first for your knowledge and wisdom and everything you shared, but secondly, the stability bodes well for the future of this committee. I had several members say this is so unique. Nique. O uji i thank you for setting a good beginning for this committee, one that you have testified for 30 years, dr. Boskin, so you have seen it all. We are very excited. Chairman brady and i are going to do a number of hearings on these topics and move forward. Thank you for being here. The hearing is adjourned. [gavel banging] you are welcome. Imagine we are in front of a group of 20yearolds, and we asked them i am launching a Nongovernmental Organization that is going to try to save a butterfly in indonesia that is in danger of extinction. Raise your hands, those of you who would like to help. You will find that among the 20 yearolds and others, people interested in doing that, which is great. And ask the same group who wants to join me in a political party, the republican tom of the democratic party, and you will see that far fewer would be willing to volunteer their time and efforts and passions in joining a political party. That is bad. I think Political Parties need to modernize, become more attractive to young professionals, because Political Parties are the essence the idea that you can have democracy without strong Political Parties is a bad idea. The changing nature of governmental and economic partner, saturday night, at 10 oclock eastern at 10 00 eastern. Look for more book tv online. Like us on facebook. I wanted to say what did george see when the door was open and he walked into that drawing room . What kind of woman did he set eyes on . It was a beautiful young woman. If you missed our program on martha washington, cspan. Org. Automatic spending cuts are beginning tomorrow. We are going to show you what numbers of congress and the white house said today about the sequester. And tomorrows white house meeting between the senate. White House Press Secretary jay carney is asked about tomorrows meeting. And speaker of the house john boehner and democratic leader nancy pelosi. We will begin with seven at with Senate Democrats. Either receives enough votes to move forward. Neither received enough votes to move forward. It is clear the American People want a balanced approach to deficit reduction. We have to do smart spending cuts. We can do that. We want to close tax loopholes and ask millionaires to pay more. That is what our proposal is. We are going to vote this afternoon. We are seeking to provide the American People with a balanced approach. That is what the American People want. By almost an 80 margin, this is what america wants. Even about 60 of republicans want this. It is hard to comprehend, but as i have said before, the only republicans in the country who disagree with this proposal are the republicans who served in congress. Today, to make it worse, they want again once again said they would filibuster any proposal we have. I went to the floor. They said they want to have a vote on a new proposal, one they agreement in their caucus, so they want something else. They want another proposal to cut federal ploys federal employees, among other things. I said fine. Lets have a majority to vote on all three. Rejection. Another filibuster. It is unfortunate that that is where we are. They are determined to protect the wealthiest. Remember, our proposal says that if you make 5 million in one year, you should pay a minimum of 30 taxes. That is pretty fair, and that is where america agrees. I believe the American People deserve better than what the republicans in this building believe is the right thing. They have endured too much economic uncertainlty. Now the economy is poised for strong, longterm growth. Our job in congress should be to provide a foundation for our economy in these next steps. The very least it is a shame our republicans have decided that protecting special interest is more important to them than our economy. . Osetta schumer question mar two months ago, congress agreed on a bipartisan basis that sequestration would be replaced with new revenues and smart spending cuts. Senator mcconnell voted for. For it. So did nancy pelosi. So did paul ryan. I voted for it. 84 of our colleagues in the senate voted for this balanced approach. Look around today. The House Republicans, Speaker Boehner and congress and ryan commerce and ryan, were nowhere to be found. Congressman ryan were nowhere to be found. I implore the speaker and all of the leaders on both sides of the aisle to come together to solve this problems. House republicans deserve to be called to task are leaving the American People in a lurch at this critical just critical juncture. We have all heard about the dire effects of sequestration. Medical Research Think about that. We are going to cut back on medical research . Research to find cures for Heart Disease, cancer, alzheimers . Illinois alone stands to learn to lose 38 million in medical research because of sequestration. 5576 fewer children will receive vaccinations. 764,000 less for seniors with meals on wheels and illinois. 70,000 children in illinois will be expelled from the head start program, including 2700 preschoolers. Instead of embracing these cuts as republicans have, our bill would ensure that millionaires are not paying a lower tax then the secretaries who work for them and the janitors who keep the lights on. Our plan closes tax loopholes that reward companies that move factories overseas. Our bill cuts wasteful payments that both democrats and republicans voted to eliminate when the Senate Passed the farm bill last year. Illinois is one of the major recipients of direct support payments. We voted to eliminate them because they are not defensible any longer. We have seen a steady stream of republicans calling for andy waste in the last several days ending waste in the last several days. They will have a chance to vote to anend the waste. Lets see if they do. Are we for National Security, education, infrastructure, and innovation . Or are we for tax loopholes, subsidies, and giveaways . Our values have reflected our commitment to National Security, education, infrastructure, and innovation. Lets hope the votes will do the same. For the last several weeks, washington has been consumed with the debate over the across theboard spending cuts due to take effect tomorrow, but the discussion has not been productive. Rather than hash out the best way to replace sequestration come up the conversation has instead revolved around who came up with the idea in the first place sequestration, the conversation has instead revolved around who came up with the idea in the first place. Only one side is trying hard to solve it. Amazingly enough, there are republicans dancing in the streets, happy with the thought that sequestration will happen. The cuts were always intended to force the two sides to revive a grand bargain on deficit reduction. We democrats are still longing for that balanced approach. We are willing to make the tough choices necessary, but we need a dance partner. We have had trouble finding one. In the house, the leadership is simply running out the clock until sequester hits. They welcome the cuts, no matter the consequences for our national defense, the class families. As a pretense, they are pointing to two votes they took in the last congress, as if those votes have any bearing now. In the senate, the other side cannot agree on a single plan to do was sequestration. That is because they are divided over the central question of whether we should even be trying to stop the cuts. Many of them want the cuts to go forward, as damaging as they are to averaging americans, to our economy, to jobs. Now they tried to unite their caucus around the measure that does not turn off the cuts, but tries to pass the buck to the president. It has been remarkable watching so many republicans who sow distrust this president suddenly willing to see the power of the purse to him. This shows you that republicans are actually quite worried about the unpopularity of these acrosstheboard cuts. They fought for the spending cuts, but they want the president to on the consequences. Later today, we will have two votes. They will not be the last word on the issue. The debate is only beginning. In the coming weeks, under chairman murrays leadership, we will consider a budget that will keep these issues front and center. A budget will show the budget will show the contest the contrast over the two sides approach. What i hold in my hand is a nnotice. This is a frightening piece of paper that many families are going to be given over the next several months. This is a notice that they are going to be laid off or furloughed. It is a piece of paper that is going to spell serious economic setbacks for a families and their ability to send their kids to thei college. In just a few days, if republicans follow through on their threats and block our attempt to replace the sequestration, notices just like this one are going to go out to more and more workers across the country. As is unacceptable. It does not make sense. It does not need to happen. Our bill to replace sequestration is fair. It is good for middleclass families, our economy. It will prevent these notices from being handed to workers across america. Republicans ought to join us and allow it to pass. Democrats are united behind our approach to replace sequestration. Republicans all over the map are all over the map. Some are saying it is all president obamas fault. On the other hand, some are cheering for these cuts. On the other hand, republicans seem to think posing loopholes for the richest americans is too high a price to avoid the serious consequences of this to defense. About the only thing they agree on is they refuse to compromise even a little bit. Republicans have spent days fighting amongst themselves regarding which bill they are even going to offer to their members as an excuse to vote against hours. House republicans could not even be bothered to take a vote. They sat on their hands, they be because Speaker Boehner knows his members could not pass anything. Republicans are going to be under a lot of pressure in the coming days to explain to their constituents back home why they would prefer the pain of sequestration to our responsible compromise replacement. Hopefully when they realize there is no good explanation, we will be able to work to solve this problem. Speaking of republicans in the house finally working with us, i want to say i am so delighted that the house leadership, after 500 days, after we had night enacted the violence against women act expired, the Senate Passed the violence against women act. 87 republicans joined with us to show that we can do the right thing for this country when we all come to an agreement. I am excited about the tribal women who have been abused and have nowhere to go. The Lgbt Community and many immigrants who a bit left out of the process in the past. When the president signs this bill they will be part of this process again. Ok. Todays vote notwithstanding with House Republican leaders waiting saying over and over they are waiting for the senate to do something. What has been the substance of any talk between you and senator mcconnell over sequestration replacement . Has there been any real substance on moving a vote . This takes a lot of pa zazz for the House Republicans to say they are waiting for the democrats to do something. They have done nothing. They did not allow the republicans to have a vote. They are falling back on something that they did in last congress. I would hope is that the republicans there, both of them, would agree with their republicans around the country, that we should have a balanced approach to get rid of this and look forward to the sequestration, which is the 27th of next month. Get it done at once. It would be so easy to do. There are things they agreed to in the past on getting rid of some of the tax loopholes and of that nature that we could have a balanced approach. So far there is no substance between you and senator mcconnell, it all starts tomorrow . Senator reid, by this point leaders would have gotten in a room even tried to work this out. Why didnt you do that this time . It is not like we havent talked about it. Ive had meetings with the speaker. We have had lots of efforts made by individual senators and republicans in the house and the senate. The republicans want sequester to go forward. They want the sequester to go forward. They said so. Any efforts to get reasonable approach to this, they wont let us do it. Couldnt they say the same thing about you because youre working to pass a bill one day before the sequester is supposed to kick in . I dont understand how you can say the same same thing about us. We have a balanced approach. All they are doing the caucus on tuesday said their proposal were going to cut off Three Fingers and we want to send to the president about which finger goes first. We tried everything we can. They will not budge on anything, period. Doing in the c. R. Next month, changing the way the cuts are being implemented . Yes, were open to any reasonable approach. Yes. But remember, we cannot solve the problems of this country with cuts, cuts, cuts. We cut 2. 6 trillion. We need to do more but were going to do it in a balanced approach. We cannot continue to hurt the middleclass and the poor. You said that revenues is part of the are you going insist on rches as part of the c. R. Talks . We have to wait to see what the house sends us. Well wait to see what they send us. We have had different proposals from them, even this week. Is it going to be a straight c. R. . It is going to be defense and veterans in it . We dont know. Well wait to see what they send us and well work on it. Can you understand the frustration of the American People that youre blaming the republicans and the republicans are blaming you. Nobody is talking until the day it kicks. I read today that the writers said, lets call it the way it. The republicans arent willing to deal with the democrats. All this stuff, democrats arent doing anything, republicans arent doing anything. I believe that you guys have an obligation to report it the way it is. This did not happen yesterday, we have been fighting this for a couple of days. They are unwilling to do what the American People want done. It is as simple as that. We do not believe that sequestration is appropriate. We do not believe that the appropriation process, which the nonexistent is a good approach. That is why im appreciative of chairman mccull ski, we need to get back to regular order. Voting here, ready to work, even tomorrow . Or the house and senator wont be here the day these cuts kick in . Were in session, were not going any place. If the republicans are willing to let us vote on our bill on a simple majority vote and were vote on their, were ready to work. But at this stage, we dont have a partner to dance with. When you draft your bill, are you willing to put spending levels at sequester levels or you going to assume there wont be a sequester Going Forward . In our budget resolution that we will put out in a few weeks, we will replace sequestration with responsible deficit reduction. One more time on the c. R. If theres a choice, is the choice over here to shut down the government or continue the sequester for the rest of the year . Lets see what they are going to send to us. Were going to move forward. Were working with republicans to come up with a bill. She will be ready to do that. Theres republicans who want more than a c. R. We have republicans who believe we should do an appropriations bill. We have to wait to see what they send us. Thanks, everybody. The Senate Considered bills by both parties. Neither received enough votes to go forward. Good the democrats plan included tax hikes for those making more than 1 million and defense cuts. This is 25 minutes. The senator from New Hampshire. I ask unanimous consent that in addition to the closure votes there will be set a time by the majority leader in consultation with the republican leader that without intervening action or debate the senate proceed to a rollcall vote to on the motion to proceed to my alternative bill dealing with the sequestered. I reserve the right to reject. Once we act at midnight tomorrow the board cuts will happen. They will ramp up really quick. The question is are we going to act to replace these acrossthe board cuts. Our plan would protect air safety. Food supply, and National Security. Frankly, that is part of our National Security. The alternative that has been put forward by my friend, the republican leader, would replace the cuts. As i said earlier one of my colleagues said on tuesday, but he understand what the republicans put forward. If you are going to cut off three thinkers 3 fingers, and youre trying to decide which one to cut first. They would call for making the cuts in a different way. Their proposal is entirely in flexible on one key point. Not a single dollar of revenue, not a single tax loophole will be close. If you make 5 million a year, you will have to pay 30 tax minimum. That is it. That does not sound too outrageous. That is why the americans agreed. Democrats, independents, and 60 of republicans. The vote would replace the cuts with unfair cuts and penalties on immigrants, health care, a Consumer Financial protection bill, those kinds of things. I also have trouble understanding why mccain and graeme do not like the republican proposal, because if you have not seated enough power to the president . It is not our fault the republican leader chose to offer the republican alternative we are going to vote on later today. I return to my question briefly the republicans are proposing replacing the sequester. Would they consider modifying to allow for a simple up and down vote on each unit . Would it make a difference if we allow votes on three levels . I would happily allow votes if they were allowed at maturity thresholds, so i have asked that. I can do it formally, and i am happy to do so. Unless my friend the republican leader says, why dont you put that in proper form, i would be happy to do that. We have a simple majority in each one. Then i would reject to the request object to the request from my friend. I would object. Is there objection to the original request . Yes. But the objection is heard. The senator from arizona. We regret there has not been able to reach an agreement. I am especially disappointed we are unable to consider the amendment, which is an alternative to sequestration. Of flexibility with sequestration, which would still have the draconian affects on our National Security. I would also point out what we are about to go through is in some respects a charade, because we know the proposal would not proceed without 60 votes. Meanwhile, the clock moved on until sometime tomorrow night. Some of us warned for a long time about the effects of sequestration. If we want the blame game, i will take the blame, but isnt it time we prevented what our military leaders in uniform who have made their careers and lives serving and sacrificing for this country say it would inflict terrible damage on our ability to protect this nation, our ability to protect and eclipse those who are serving. I appreciate what members on both side of the aisle praise those surveyed, but shouldnt we think about those who do not know what they are going to be doing tomorrow . The Aircraft Carrier when it decided not to deploy to the middle east at a time when tensions are incredibly high . I would also point out this is not a fair sequestration. Most would agree this is half out of defense and half out of nondefense. It is not. About half of the spending we engage in it is exempt, such as compensation for the president , such as the federal home loan mortgage corp. , such as payment to the District Of Columbia pension fund, such as the support fund for relocation all of these and many others were made exempt, which meant but the reduction was even larger, and those who designed this legislation decided not the federal loan mortgage relocation decided that the federal loan mortgage relocation was more important than the fence. 19 of Discretionary Spending is out of defense. We are asking for a 50 cut on top of 87 billion already enacted, on top of 487 billion in defense, which is already set to be cut. The numbers continue to decline, and what are we doing . A few days ago there was a wonderful ceremony in the white house where a brave Young American received a congressional medal of honor. I happen to go to a function in a pizza place with him and his colleagues who fought, and a book was written, an excellent book that i recommend. Eight of their comrades were killed, and here we are, unable to make sure these young men and women have the equipment and training and everything they need to defend this nation. We are doing a disservice, and the president did them a disservice when he said, not to worry. Sequestration will not happen. The president said that. I did not say that. We now know the idea came from the white house, but that is the blame game, and i would be glad to negotiate that. Are we going to lurch from one fiscal cliff to another . If we want to do that, that is one thing, but what they are doing with the military the general is one of the great leaders i have had the pleasure of knowing. The chief of staff of the army, a man who has got decorations from here to here said he cannot replace the men and women serving in afghanistan under this sequestration because he does not have the ability to train their replacements. Isnt that alarm enough for us . We are going to go through this charade, and we are going to have a vote, and the clock will tick, and tomorrow on the last monday, the president is going to call people to the white house and see if we can address it. Where was he in the last year . I am not taking the floor today for the blame game. I am pleading for the men and women serving this nation who have a tougher time than we do that we cannot do something on their behalf to sit down with the president of the United States and get this issue resolved before we do great damage to our National Security. I thank the senator for her proposal. It is real. Reductions in spending so we do not have to go through sequestration. Now we have a choice between flexibility, which nobody really knows what i mean, and a proposal but theres no relevance to the issue that faces us. I thank my colleagues for their time if i sound emotional on this issue, it is because i am. It seems to me at least on this issue and who we should come together, and i stand ready to put everything on the table to prevent what could be a devastating blow to our ability to defend this nation in what i could make an argument would be the most dangerous times. With that, i yield. The senator from South Carolina. I want to thank the gentlewoman who authored this. She spent a lot of time trying to fix sequestration, to look at programs that are not as essential to the nation as the department of defense, and let me put this in perspective. I do not need a poll to tell me what to think about this. He reference to a poll about where the American People are at. I appreciate polling. I do not need one year to know where i am out, and the question is if the people think i am wrong, i will have an election in 2014. I am willing to stand before the people and say what we are doing in this sequestration proposal. Lets start with the commander in chief. Make no mistake. The sequestration is not meant to be policy. Rather, it is meant to be an unpalatable option all parties want to avoid. That was their view. According to bob woodward and common sense, this idea came out of the white house, and the white house thought if you created a penalty clause called sequestration or you would have to take 600 billion of the 1. 2 trillion out of the Defense Department that would make it more likely to achieve our result, and if you took 600 million out of nondefense that would put more pressure on getting the best results. We are going to spend 45 trillion over the next decade. The question is can we saved without destroying the Defense Department . Yes, if we try. This is an achievable spending cut. This is not unachievable, but what senator mccain said is very important. 2 3 of the budget almost is exempt from sequestration. When you hear a republican say, surely we can find 85 billion out of 3. 5 trillion dollars in spending, that is not accurate. Good we are not now cutting 85 billion out of the report 5 trillion dollars. And we are cutting it out of 1. 3 because of the budget control act took off the table who three of the government from being cut. I will get to the president in a minute, but let me talk about my party, the party of Ronald Reagan, the party that believes the number one obligation of the federal government before you do anything else is to get National Security right. That is what made rahman reagan Ronald Reagan. That is what i believe. I do not need a poll to tell me that. I do not care if 95 of the people say that is not part of its. The party of Ronald Reagan agreed to it, and what did we agree to . And we agreed to take off the table 2 3 of the federal government. A telegram pell grants. My sister got one. It helps people go to college who are low income americans. It is 31. 5 7 billion. Food stamps, a lot of people need help. The Food Stamp Program has doubled. I guess the Republican Party feels that pell grants and food stamps and all this other stuff in the federal government should be shielded, but those who have been fighting a war that now protects off from protects us from radical islam should be on the chopping block. Ronald reagan would be rolling over on his grave. Shame on everyone who thought this was a good idea on our side. I cannot tell you how disgusted i am with the concept of when it comes time to cut because of a bunch of politicians cannot reach an agreement wheat keep every other social program in tact and put half the cuts on those fighting the war, so the next time you go on a military base, good luck looking those men and women in the eye, because i do not see how you could. I do not see how you could thank them for their service, given the fact you have taken the Defense Department and made it not very special anymore. I will wrap this up. This is what secretary panetta said. After 10 years of these cuts without the smallest Ground Forces since 1940, the smallest amount of ships since 1950 and the smallest airport in its history. This is not like the drawbacks in the past where the potential enemy was rendered ineffective. Now we are still facing a number of threats. It would cripple our ability to protect our government. It would weaken our ability to respond to threats. Is an air wing without enough pilots. The military does not happen by accident. To my democratic colleagues, we are not going to raise more taxes to spend money on the government. The next time i raise taxes we are going to try to get out of debt. We are 17 trillion dollars in debt. Every time there is a crisis you want to raise money to pay for the government we have got. We already have money. We need to spend it better. There is not enough flexibility to change the top line. You either believe secretary panetta or you do not. I do not trust everything a general tells me, but the question for me is do i trust all of the generals that tell me the same vein and now . Can all of them be wrong . When every general and adderall tells you the same thing, and we do not believe them, we need to fire them. As for the president , you have got one obligation no one in this body has. You are the commander in chief of the United States. They trust you. They need you. The primary goal is to take care of those in uniform and their families. Mr. President , you have let them down. My party it let them down, but you are different from any politician. You are the commander in chief. How you could consider this as an acceptable outcome makes me sick to my stomach. How you could be comfortable with the idea that we are going to get the military and you have not lifted a finger to do anything about it. You finally go to the naval base after the election of todays before this kicks in. For me this is two days before this kicks in. This is the low point in my time in the United States congress. We are not going to raise taxes to fund the government. And i cannot tell you how ashamed i am about to what we have done for those who have been busting their butts for the last 11 years and to their families. The banks you get from the president is that we are going to put you on the chopping block. If we cannot do better than that, all of us should be fired. The gentle man from rhode island. I have the right to ask a question for the gentleman who has the floor. My question is you think the American People appreciate and understand what this does to the lives of the men and women who are serving for example, those on that Aircraft Carrier they said was going to be deployed for many months, and it was canceled at the last minute . The training plans that will have to be canceled, the deployments that will have to be changed, not to mention the massive layoffs in the Defense Industry, which sometimes are not easily replaceable who . That is my question. We have done everything to tell them what is coming our way, and all i can say is everyone has told us the same thing. I respect what they tell us. Leon panetta has been a great secretary of defense. I trust their judgment. I know enough to know that if you take 600 billion, you are going to put our men and women at risk. That is what this debate is about. The senator has come up with an alternative that would avoid this without raising taxes. Neither the democratic or the republican bill received enough votes to move forward. But congressional leaders, including senators and john boehner and nancy pelosi are scheduled to meet with president obama at the white house tomorrow. Jim kearney began with comments on the senate legislation. Jim carney began with comments on dozen senate legislation. Seen moments ago a statement from the president on the house passage of the violence against women act. The only reason it might not pass is that a majority of republicans would filibuster the bill. That bill would over the problem we have confronting us with this imminent deadline, so we will have to see what it does. So well have to see what the senate actually does, whether republicans filibuster this bill. That has not happened yet. Maybe theyll have a change of heart. And that will obviously affect the topics of conversation tomorrow in the meeting with the president. The president believes we need to come together and deal with the sequester. And the sequester is just one piece of the broader challenge here, which is reducing our deficit in a balanced way. Thats what the sequester was part of when it was included in the budget control act. And it was designed as policy that would never come into effect because it was so onerous for both sides. It would compel congress to reach a compromise that reduced our deficit by a further 1. 2 trillion. The president , as you know, has put forward a proposal that is balanced, that works on that continues the progress that weve made in deficit reduction, 2. 5 trillion thus far, more than two dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in revenue represented in that 2. 5 trillion of deficit reduction the kind of balance that tilts toward spending cuts that this president has put on the table, the kind of balance that we havent seen, unfortunately, from republicans. But he hopes that whether it is action by republicans to deal with the sequester in the short term in a balanced way, or to take up the project of a bigger deal and more deficit reduction that helps us reach that 4 trillion goal, he will be hoping that republicans, whether its the short term or the long term, are ready to talk seriously about compromise and making sure that washington is not inflicting wounds on the economy right when the economy should be growing and creating jobs. Well, is there anything thats off the table for tomorrow . Were there any preconditions from either the president or from republicans in terms of taxes or things that are not to be part of whats asked for tomorrow . Well, no, there are no preconditions to a meeting like this. This is a meeting with the president and leaders of congress, both parties. And obviously, any topic is up for discussion if one member of the group decides he or she wants to broach it. The immediate purpose of the meeting is to talk about the imminent sequester deadline and the need to avert it the need, if it is implemented, to take action in a balanced way to deal with our deficit reduction in a way that doesnt unduly burden seniors, or middleclass families, or parents of children with disabilities, that asks everyone to bear the burden, and that by doing that, allows our economy to continue to grow, to continue the recovery that weve seen underway now for three years, but that still has a long way to go. So the president is firm in his conviction that we need to include balance in our deficit reduction. It is unacceptable, it is a my way or the highway approach to say that revenues shouldnt be part of it because as its true of the proposal republicans in the senate are putting forward today, whats true about that proposal is true with the general republican position, which is that they would rather see sequester take effect with its job loss, with its negative effect on Economic Growth, than ask a single wealthy individual to pay a little bit more, to give up a special tax break, to ask some big corporations or industries to forego their loopholes or limit their deductions. And thats just not a position that is sustainable, we believe, and its not fair to the American People. We will discuss pending automatic federal spending cuts with don edwards of maryland, whose district includes washington, d. C. And and the home of air force one. Also joining us will be on who ran the forbes. That is lives every day at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. House Speaker John Boehner told reporters in negotiations over the sequestered he was ruling out tax increases. Good morning, everyone. Americans know washington has a spending problem. It is hurting families and Small Businesses and must be addressed. There are many people in washington who do not believe the government has a spending problem, the minority leader, the minority whip, who do not believe we have a spending problem. The president said to me in december we do not have a spending problem. In the four years since the Senate Democrats last passed a budget, Government Debt has ballooned to 16 trillion. I do not believe that that is a result of insufficient taxation. This year the federal government will bring in revenue more money in from taxpayers than any year in our history. The debt is a result, i believe, of spending that is out of control. I think the spending problem we have in washington is threatening the future for our kids and grandkids and is threatening the american dream. Republicans have offered solutions to promote Economic Growth and address our Long Term Debt crisis, and we will again as part of our upcoming budget deal with these issues in an open and honest way. In contrast, president obama and Senate Democrats are demanding more tax hikes to fuel more stimulus spending. Republicans have voted twice to replace the president s sequester with smarter spending cuts and reforms. The president and Democratic Leaders have failed to pass a solution of their own. It is time they do. My message at the white house will be the same as what i am telling you today. It is time for them to do their job and pass a bill. This week we announced that hr1 will be reserved for tax reform legislation. The tax reform that lowers rates and closes loopholes will help create american jobs and promote more Economic Growth in our country. The president talked about closing loopholes, but only as sufficient to fund more government spending. Do we want to close loopholes . We sure do, but only if we are going to do tax reform that focuses on creating jobs, not funding more government. Last year we proposed generating new revenue through tax reform. We did that as an alternative to the president s demand for higher tax rates, and ultimately the president got revenues and got his way in higher rates. Given those facts, the revenue issue is now closed. Any revenue generated by closing loopholes should be used to lower rates across the board for american families. That will create jobs and make america more competitive. That choice is simple. Should tax reform focus more often the government or on creating jobs . I am for more jobs, too. Mr. Speaker, if the cuts in sequestration are not smart, why was there never even talk of a bipartisan negotiation to avoid those . The house has acted twice over the last 10 months to replace these cuts with smarter cuts. We have done our job. The president has not offered a plan. It is time for them to pass a plan. [indiscernible] the house did its job. I am happy to talk of the president and senator reid, but the way things happen around here is the house passes a bill, the Senate Passes a bill, we disagree, we go to conference. It looks like the sequestration will go into effect. Are you open to oneonone negotiations with president obama which many outside analysts think it is the only way this can be resolved . I am happy to talk and work with the president , but the house has done its job. It is time for the senate to do its job. [indiscernible] to any extent possible we should follow regular order to arrive here. It does not happen as long as it should. Regular order around here is we have done our work. They have not done their part. The house should not have to pass a third bill to replace the sequester before the Senate Passes one. The clock on all of this debate over Debt Reduction did not start at christmastime when the president did get his revenue. It started a couple of years ago. The overall Debt Reduction that you all have done has been roughly 21 spending cuts to revenue. Why is the revenue discussion closed now . The president got his tax hikes. The American Economy is going to create more tax revenue this year than any year in our history. We do not have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. It is time to get serious. You are up 21. You are up 21 already. You are up 21. Why is the revenue discussion over . You are asking the question, how much more money do we want to steal from the American People to fund more government . I am for no more. One of the central parts of the debate has been your calling this the president s sequester. Even, if that is true, which you and bob woodward think it is true, how much does that matter since he accepted it and you ushered it through your chamber and got his signature . Look, listen, it was the president s sequester, it was his team that insisted on it, and lets remember why we have to sequester and why the president insisted upon it. Because the president did not like the agreement that senator reid, senator mcconnell, and i had to deal with the First Tranche of cuts and to move the debt limit out a year. He wanted to make sure he did not have to deal with a debt limit before his reelection. This is about his convenience, in not wanting to go to refight the debt limit again. That is why he came up with a sequester as a backstop to the supercommittee. But the possibility for accepting that . It was a negotiation. I did not like it any more than anybody else. When the president and harry reid told me they would work with us to get an outcome of the supercommittee, i felt confident we could get an outcome. Unfortunately, we did not. Mr. Boehner, you said you have worked to get an agreement. Are you concerned about the optics of not even doing that and the house being out . I will be here tomorrow. I will go down to the white house and accept the president s invitation. We have laid our cards on the table. We have shown that we can pass a bill to replace the sequester. That is why we did it twice. It is time for the senate act. [indiscernible] everybody is talking about a lot of blame going around right now, but few people have blamed the supercommittee. They were the ones who were charged. Dont they share blame, and if they do, why do we not hear from them . I do not blame the supercommittee members or their leaders who worked with the members of the supercommittee. It is unfortunate they did not come to an outcome. There were an awful lot of others influencing the supercommittee to not come to an agreement unless their goals were met. I would start there with the president of the United States. Thanks. House democrats also addressed the spending cuts. This is 40 minutes. Are we set . Good morning, everyone. I am so honored to be here with some of my women colleagues in the house of representatives. Others are on the floor as we debate the violence against women act. It is important to come together today because tomorrow is fraught with meaning on the calendar. It is march 1, it is a day that the indiscriminate acrossthe board spending cuts will cause unemployment, instability, and uncertainty in our economy. It is a day when soon people will be getting a pink slip. We might as well get a pink slip from the office of the speaker and the republican conference the 750,000 American Workers laid off because of sequester implementation. Unless the house stops the acrosstheboard spending cuts, you too could lose your job. Tomorrow, also march 1, is the beginning of womens history month. We should refer to it as womens progress month, acknowledging our history, seeing what more we have to do, and i mention these two points because of the impact of sequestration on women. It is specific, it is large, it is substantial, and it must be avoided. My colleagues are here detail some about it, but consider this cuts to womens health, from prenatal care to cancer screenings and cuts the services to victims of Domestic Violence 20 million will be cut out of the violence against women account, 20 million for cuts to initiatives to support children and to support wic and head start, cuts to womens jobs. Democrats want solutions. Republicans want sequestration. Some of them have called it a home run. That does not sound like anybody is on team america if they think sequestration is a home run. There is no time to waste. You know that. We are at once again against a time limit. We should stay here. How could we have been gone for 10 days just leading up this, coming in now for a few days . We have a positive solution. Chris van hollen has put forth an initiative that recognizes that he must cut spending, that we need revenue, and we want growth with jobs. It is similar to the proposal in the senate, is positive, and had a good suggestions that some republicans have made themselves in the past. Our priorities are clear. Creation of jobs. I have sent you before, others have told me since last week when we talked about what is the root of the word sequester. Sequester is really to hold hostage, and that is exactly what this does. It holds hostage. We will go to the white house tomorrow, and everyone will be there with an open mind to deal with a wider range of issues so we do not have these minuteto minute, monthtomonth crises, manufactured crises. For the sake of our country, for the sake of americas women, the health and security of our Economic Security for our families, democrats and republicans must Work Together to protect the middle class, create jobs, and reduce the deficit in a very, very sensible way. With that i am pleased to yield to a champion for women, whether paycheck fairness and lily ledbetter, the distinguished chairman of the policy committee, rosa delauro of connecticut. Thank you very much, and i am again honored as you are to stay here with our colleagues today to address these issues. If i may quickly paraphrase from a report by the National Womens law center, women are more likely than men to be poor at all stages of their lives because of the ongoing employment discrimination and greater responsibilities for unpaid caregiving. These dangerous, indiscriminate, and acrossthe board cuts threaten Vital Services for women and their families and the services they rely on every single day in order to make their way. They also threaten our economy and will cost women thousands of jobs. While there will be a Ripple Effect throughout the economy, many of the jobs destroyed by this sequester will be Public Sector jobs that are disproportionately held by women. Women make up 57 of Public Sector jobs. While the private sector has continued to gain jobs of the past year, the Public Sector has lost 74,000 jobs, 85 of these being 63,000 jobs held by women, and they were lost by women. Cuts to head start could cost 14,000 teachers, teachers assistants, and staff. Cuts to education grants would mean 21,500 women teachers and aide jobs lost. Cuts to special education would force the layoffs of 7,500 lower jobs, and wic, you will see a loss at the state and local level because we know who are working in working in the wic offices. You take chowder, where 86 of families serve our single parent households and we know who the child care providers are in this country. Theyre mostly women. Allowing these cuts to pass is reckless, irresponsible, and it is especially harmful to women, to their jobs, and to the services that they rely on. What do women want from this economy . What do they want for their families . They want an economy that creates jobs and that grows the middle class and provides an opportunity for themselves and for their families to succeed. We should not be going down this road. The democrats have an alternative. We need to take hold of it and move forward and make sure that womens Economic Security is not further eroded. It is now my pleasure to introduce jan schakowsky. Warning sequestration is dangerous to womens health. Four examples one, sequestration will cut essential initiatives, including 8 million from the breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program and 24 million for Reproductive Health services in title x. Two, the National Institutes of health will cut 1. 56 billion, cutting back research in areas such as alzheimers, environMental Health, links to Breast Cancer and Mental Health services. Sequestration hurts mothers. While the United States lags behind other industrialized nations in preventing maternal and infant mortality, sequestration cuts 4 million from the safe motherhood initiative, 50 million from the maternal and child health services, and incredibly, will deny lifesaving in immunization to 30,000 children. Three, sequestration hurts women as caregivers. Women are typically the caregivers, not just to children, but to aging parents. Sequestration would cut 12. 6 million from the National Family caregivers program, reducing services to 700,000 family caregivers. Four, sequestration will hurt the many women who work in health care professions. Look at the National Health service corps, Education Assistance and training for direct care workers, nurses, family physicians, and other healthcare professionals. Warning sequestration is bad for the health of women and their families. Now it is my pleasure to introduce someone with whom i have the pleasure of co chairing the Seniors Task Force of the Democratic Caucus, someone who is a champion for women of all ages, and that is doris matsui. Thank you for bringing us to get here. All of us here today understand we should be focusing on moving us forward, but the ugly word of sequestration trends to cripple our economy, with severe cuts that will be devastating to our countrys women, children, and families. If sequestration occurs, 70,000 Young Children will be kicked out of head start programs, and in my district of sacramento, 3,000 children will lose access. These kids do not know what sequestration is about. They only care about learning their colors, their abcs, getting their snacks, and perhaps learning how to play with each other. Safeothers care about the nurturing environment that head start provides and the Resources Available to them to get back on their feet. This includes someone i recently talked to. Ashley, a sacramento resident who knew, had to make changes in her life when she became a mother. Thanks to head start, her daughter received nutritious meals and early education, and ashley was able to finish her education while also working. Sequestration will force cuts to the women, infants, and childrens program. Wic connects lowincome women with services, parental care to healthy food options. Wic is a helping hand to women who needed the most. I have seen the lines of wic. There are two wic programs in my district. These are not cuts that we can afford at all. I stand here with my colleagues today to urge the majority to work with us to prevent them. That is my pleasure to introduce a good friend of mine, Donna Edwards from maryland. Thank you bringing us all here together to focus our attention on how these harsh and arbitrary, acrosstheboard budget cuts will harm millions of women across the country. Here today, after months of failure to pass a violence against women act, a bipartisan act, it is quite the irony that later on today the house is going to finally reach authorize and hours before they take a sledgehammer to the already strapped budgets of a nations mystic violence per month, causing disruption of services. More than 6 million women each year are harmed by Domestic Violence. Their children in every single congressional districts across the country, millions of children live in homes where they witness Domestic Violence, and as a result of the republican failure and it is their failure to stop the sequestration services these women rely on for their lives and safety will be cut by 20 billion. 112,000 victims of Domestic Violence, including 3,500 in the small state of maryland, will not receive the Critical Services they need to escape Domestic Violence. 230,000 victims will be calling crisis hotlines, and those calls will go on unanswered. 230,000 calls to crisis hotlines around the country. You can imagine that in the middle of the night a woman is being battered, she has her two children, she wants to get to safety, she places a phone call to a hotline, and that line goes unanswered. That is what sequestration means to the victims of Domestic Violence. And so i think this is shameful. We all do. We know it can be stopped. Here we are on a thursday, set to go home for the weekend. First of all, people working in america they do not go to home on thursday. Theres time for us to stop this. The republicans hold the gavel. The republicans have the ability to stop sequestration. It is really very shameful that they are going to go home this weekend without doing that. And so, for the women who are forced to stay in their homes with their abuser because theres no place to go because shelters have been cut, because hotlines go on answered, that is on the hands of the gop here in the house of representatives. And so i would urge our colleagues, even at this late moment, that there is something that they can do about that. Democrats have put forward a fair and balanced proposal that balances spending cuts with revenue so we can deal both with the deficits, but also with how we grow our economy, and it is time for them to do this. With that i would like to turn the microphone over to my colleaguo