Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished leader of the Democratic Party in the House, Nancy Pelosi of California.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS. I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, I rise to review the bidding here. We are down to the end of this debate on this continuing resolution, and I hope--and as I know Chairman Rogers hopes--that this will be the last continuing resolution and that working together we can come together on a solution to the FY11 budget. Now, I've heard repeatedly, repeatedly, and I've even mentioned this in my last statement, and the next thing I knew it was on Cantor's Web site, but back in 2007, the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky will remember that when we took over power and won the election in 2006, most of the nine, I think, or 10 of the appropriations bills were not enacted, and the Democrats had to pass a bill in February enacting all of these things. So maybe we learned that lesson from you-all over there, and I hope you will remember it because you seem to act like this has never happened before. Well, that's number one. Number two, the American people in a Washington Post-ABC poll yesterday over the weekend said that they are worried that the cuts in H.R. 1 will hurt the economy. It was narrow. It was 45-41, but 71 percent of the people said the problem was that your side isn't engaging and that they blame the Republicans for not getting this deal. Now, why would they think that? I think the reason for it is when the first Rogers amendment proposal came out, that was kind of a reasonable approach, but that was rejected; and then they doubled the amount of these cuts, and the cuts became very severe and very questionable. There was a story in The Washington Post today that lays out if you cut food inspectors, you're going to pay for it; if you cut WIC funding, you're going to pay for it, billions, in these children. So I just point these things out. Cutting Head Start, this was perceived by the American people as too extreme, and that is why the Senate rejected H.R. 1, the President rejected H.R. 1. We need to have reasonable people sit down and work out a compromise and not let the government be shut down. I believe that this should be the last CR and that we all should agree here today that this is going to be the last CR and that we are committed to getting this resolved. And that's what the American people also said in this ABC-Washington Post poll, not that I follow the polls much; but they also said they wanted us to come to an agreement. So, again, I pledge to our chairman that we're not going to let this happen again; that this year we will pass all 12 appropriation bills by August, and we've done that before; and that we will end this process that started back in 2007 and which got continued in 2011. It is not the way to do the government's business. So let's make a pledge today that after this CR, we're going to work together to solve this problem and move on to FY12. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Will the gentleman yield to me on that same point?

Mr. DICKS. Being from Washington State, I am as concerned as the gentleman is about the west coast. We have a number of Indian tribes that are right down at the coastal waters, and several of them are trying to move back because of a tsunami. This is a great wake-up call. One of the things I'm worried about are the satellites. We have new satellites that we're supposed to be procuring. This program is in some trouble, and I'm worried that these cuts are going to affect the ability of NOAA to get these satellites in a proper time. They give us the warning on major weather fronts. This is another important aspect of this. FEMA is another problem. I just want to rise to congratulate the two gentlemen from Oregon for bringing this to the floor as we watch to see how these tsunamis hit the west coast of the United States. I mean, some of the weather forecasters have said that this could be a very serious problem, but we hope it isn't. I just wanted to associate myself with the remarks that have been made here and stress how important the NOAA budget is and the importance of getting these satellites replaced in a timely way.

Mr. DICKS. We've had a volcano. Mount St. Helens erupted and it was enormous. I had been told again and again when I was chairman of Interior that California has a very complex system of detection. The rest of the country doesn't. Washington and Oregon do not have the same level of early warning equipment. So I think this is another thing that we've got to work on. Again, these cuts are going to make it more difficult for us to get the equipment that we need to predict and to detect when these things are occurring. I worry about Mt. Rainier. Mt. Rainier could have the lahar, and we've been told by USGS that Washington State could have a 9. This was 8-9, and look at the enormous damage that was done there. I mean, we could have another major event in the future. I hope it doesn't happen, but it does happen every 300 or 400 years.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip and former majority leader, who will help correct the record.

Mr. DICKS. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. DICKS. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DICKS. Let me just make a brief comment. And I do applaud the gentleman from California as chairman of the Rules Committee for giving, for working out that modified open rule. Just let me, on the point about Mr. Taylor at Stanford, Stanford's a very good school. My son graduated from it, and I'm quite proud of that. A letter signed by 300 of America's leading economists makes the argument that cutting investments this quickly will undermine growth. Among the original signers from Stanford alone: Kenneth Arrow, Martin Carnoy, Paul David, Mordecai Kurz, Roger Noll, and Gavin Wright.

Mr. DICKS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. I just want to say one brief word. I applaud these modified open rules. And on the regular bills on appropriations, we hope--Mr. Rogers and I have been in contact, we're going to get these bills done in a timely way. And we want open rules, and we want to be able to have these unanimous consent agreements after the bills have been on the floor for a while in order to narrow the amendments and then to get these things done in a timely fashion. And I think that it's going to take the cooperation of all of the Members to be able to do that.

Mr. DICKS. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DICKS. That was a good process. I appreciate what you all did in having an open rule. I applaud Chairman Rogers and Chairman Dreier. That is the right thing to do. It was appreciated on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. DICKS. I did my best to help. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, the CR disproportionately cuts education, especially literacy efforts. David Brooks, not known as a left-wing journalist, writes in the New York Times column today: ``If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. In Washington, the Republicans who designed the cuts for this fiscal year seem to have done no serious policy evaluation.'' Last night, I asked the Rules Committee to make in order an amendment restoring education cuts. The amendment cut $1 billion from the Census in money that wasn't needed, applying most of that to offset education spending, and the remainder went to further reducing the deficit below the levels in the CR before us. The Rules Committee chose not to make that amendment in order, and therefore I oppose the rule. But to talk to the gentleman, I spent 8 years on the staff of the other body, and this is my 35th year in the House of Representatives. Nobody ever gets everything they want: This is a process where the House passes a bill, it goes to the Senate, and then we have a conference committee or the Senate sends the bill back to us. Both sides meet and work out their differences. There is give and take, there is compromise, and that is the way this process works. And I also want to say to the gentleman, and to your side, remember it was the Democratic Congress and the House Senate and Mr. Obama signing the $41 billion cut from the Obama FY11 budget. It was the Democrats that did it. We had one Republican vote. And I just want to remind you, that was done in December in a lame duck session, which turned out to be a very effective lame duck session; and in that bill we made cuts across the board in all these areas. So I want to make it clear we are also for deficit reduction, but what I am concerned about--and I know the gentleman is very sincere, I can tell that, I know you believe in every word that you are saying-- but the biggest problem with that is what the effect will be on our economy. Mark Zandi of Moody's says, it will cost us 400,000 jobs in 2011, 700,000 jobs in 2012. Goldman Sachs, who I don't normally quote, they say that this could cut 1.5 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. That could mean the loss of 2.4 million jobs over the next 2 years. That's not what you want to do. You're trying to reduce the deficit, and the way you reduce the deficit is put people back to work. You get them back to work, and they pay their taxes in and the deficit comes down, the unemployment rate comes down. If you do the wrong thing and make draconian cuts at the same time that the States are cutting $125 billion from their budgets, the impact of those two things--$61 billion and the $125 billion--could have a very devastating effect on the economy and hurt a lot of programs needlessly because it's going to be counterproductive. I just hope that you think about that. There isn't any economic theory that I've ever heard of called ``cut and grow.''

Mr. DICKS. So, again, it was the Democratic Congress that cut the $41 billion. And every reputable economist says what you did in H.R. 1 is going to have a negative effect on the economy. And so I hope you all think carefully about what you're about to do. Again, it takes compromise. You've got to work with the other body to come up with a reasonable solution here, or we're going to have problems with a government shutdown. And you can say whatever you want, but we don't need the government shutting down when we're in two wars, a war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq, and a global war on terror. We don't need to shut the government down.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, today we will consider a short-term continuing resolution that will allow the essential functions of our government to continue beyond March 4, the date on which the current continuing resolution will expire. With no final agreement on the spending levels for the current fiscal year, this measure is necessary in order to avoid a government shutdown, something I believe we should all want to do. I think that 2 weeks is not enough time to reach an agreement on H.R. 1 with the other body, and I'm afraid we're going to be back here doing this again. Now, when the House approved H.R. 1 earlier this month, despite the overwhelming opposition of the Democratic Caucus, it was clear to me that gaining agreement on a compromised version of a full-year continuing resolution would be very difficult, at least before the expiration of the current CR. We opposed H.R. 1 because we believe it would have the effect of slamming on the fiscal brakes too abruptly, resulting in higher unemployment and threatening our Nation's economic recovery. There is no dispute that cutting Federal spending too deeply and too quickly before the economy has fully recovered risks slowing growth and losing jobs. Moody's estimates that H.R. 1 would reduce real growth in 2011 by 0.5 percent, meaning 400,000 fewer jobs in 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012. The Economic Policy Institute projected job losses near 800,000. Goldman Sachs predicts that H.R. 1 would slow economic growth by about 1.5 to 2 percentage points, which translates into the American economy losing up to 2.4 million jobs. So the recovery of our economy and the reduction of unemployment should be our paramount concern at this time. I said during the debate on H.R. 1 earlier this month, and I will repeat today, that I believe the approach to deficit reduction that has been adopted by the Republican majority here in the House is far too narrow and too focused on the smallest segment of spending in the budget. It is a risky strategy based on the specious concept of cut and grow, which of course has no basis in sound economic theory. So where does this leave us? We are now 6 months into the current fiscal year, FY11, and hearings with regard to the fiscal year 2012 budget have begun in both the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee. H.R. 1 is clearly not acceptable to the other body, nor would it be acceptable to the President, whose signature is necessary before any funding bill can become law. What the President has already proposed for the coming year--a budget freeze at last year's level--remains, in my judgment, the best and most effective way to reduce the deficit and to support recovery in major sectors of our economy. In fact, we have already adopted a freeze at FY10 levels in the continuing resolution that we are currently operating under. Democrats approved the CR in December with only one Republican vote, which represents a reduction of $41 billion from the levels sought by the President in his FY 2011 budget request. This is a significant reduction in the deficit, and a significant part of that came from defense. I want to repeat this. The $41 billion cut from the Obama FY11 budget was passed in a CR by the Democratic House and Democratic Senate and signed into law by the Democratic President with only one Republican vote. We are now on the verge of an expiring CR, and we are considering another version that extends the time to resolve the differences by only 2 weeks. I take the chairman at his word that neither he nor his leadership is interested in shutting down the operation of the Federal Government by declaring a stalemate in these appropriations deliberations. I will concede that it is disconcerting to me and others on our side to read the Speaker's comments this week that would seem to imply that there is a strategy of passing shorter term appropriation bills, with further and further and further cuts 2 weeks at a time. We were concerned by his statement that seemed to indicate a plan for a piecemeal approach to future spending cuts. He said, ``If they won't eat the whole loaf at one time, we'll make them eat it one slice at a time.'' I believe we need to set aside these political machinations and get serious about finishing up work on the fiscal year 2011 budget. I will be the first to admit that it is because the Democrats didn't pass our bills last year that we're here working on this. So we have responsibility, too, and that's one of the reasons why we were so eager to engage Chairman Rogers in trying to get this open rule, to work through the amendments, get a unanimous consent agreement--to help move this process forward because I personally feel we have some responsibility here. And I think it is obvious that we are going to need more than the 2 weeks to get from here to there. Now, I appreciate the desire of the gentleman from Kentucky to encourage the Members of his caucus to enter into serious negotiations with the other body with the hope of completing work by March 18. But in a conference--I've been in conferences for 34 years as a Member and 8 years before that as a staffer--nobody gets everything they want. It's a process of compromise. You work out the differences between the two positions. So I'm proud of the fact that we start with a cut of $41 billion that was enacted by the Democratic Congress in December during a very successful lame duck session. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who is also the ranking Democratic member on Health and Human Services.

Mr. DICKS. I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), one of our distinguished Members.

Mr. DICKS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.