Amendment No. 1521

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, this afternoon the Senate will vote on an important amendment offered by a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Senator from Rhode Island, Jack Reed, who is also the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.

I commend Senator Reed for the stellar job he has done in being a manager of this bill. He is one of the most thoughtful and responsible Members of the Senate and always has been.

He has great legislative experience, having served in the House before he came here.

Senator Reed's amendment addresses a major threat to our national security and the middle class--sequestration. Sequestration refers to deep, mindless, automatic cuts throughout the government. These cuts were authorized 4 years ago to force Congress to reduce the deficit in a balanced way.

Unfortunately, they did not work. Republicans are unwilling to close even a single tax loophole--not a single tax loophole to reduce the deficit. Now we face the prospect of arbitrary and unreasonable cuts that were once assumed to be so stupid that Congress would not allow them to happen. But something that everyone thought was stupid is now official Republican policy. Unless we can reach a bipartisan agreement to fix sequestration, these cuts will occur, not smoothly but as if done by a meat cleaver.

That threatens not only our military security but also the economic security of America's middle class, which really is our national security. The bill aims to avoid sequestration for the Defense Department with a widely ridiculed budget loophole, which would put actual defense spending on the Nation's credit card, increasing our deficit and our debt.

I am stunned by my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona. When I was an appropriator, I was on this Senate floor and I watched him, with his staff in the back of the room every time we did an appropriations bill. He pored through line by line with his staff of every appropriations bill. If there was something he thought was askew he would object to it. We got used to that because, frankly, it saved money over time.

He referred to all the pork that was in these bills, and he and I disagreed on what was determined to be pork, but I understood where he was coming from. I am just flabbergasted now that the senior Senator from Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is agreeing to a one-time gimmick. All the experts have said these gimmicks don't work--especially this one. Now, the committee, led by my friend the senior Senator from Arizona, is agreeing to this gimmick. Think of that. The Republicans, led by the senior Senator from Arizona, are advocating deficit spending big time--not a little bit, big time--tens of billions of dollars.

Our troops deserve better than this. Meanwhile, unless we deal with the impact of sequestration more broadly, middle-class America will suffer drastic cuts in things that matter to them the most--cuts in priorities such as education, job creation, and lifesaving research. Sequestration of nondefense programs is also an attack on our military families. For example, sequestration threatens to cut VA spending, health care spending for the military, job training for returning veterans, schools that teach children of military families, and heating assistance for veterans who are struggling.

If we are going to be fair to military families, just as to millions of other working Americans, we need to fix sequestration for more than just the Pentagon. We need to fix it for defense and nondefense programs jointly. Defense and nondefense are inextricable. They are certainly things we cannot separate.

That is what the Reed amendment is designed to change through bipartisan negotiations. There is no reason to wait to negotiate a bipartisan budget. It makes no sense to start spending extra money on defense or anything else until we agree on an overall plan. Put simply, we ought to budget first and spend later. That is the only responsible way for a family or our Nation to conduct its business.

That is why the Reed amendment makes so much sense. I urge my colleagues to support the Reed amendment. A plan that avoids unnecessary cuts to priorities such as education, job creation, and research is what the Reed amendment is all about. It is a plan that funds all agencies that protect our security, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Drug Enforcement Administration--all of these vital programs. It is a plan that funds our troops, protects military families, and makes the long-term investment needed to ensure a secure, prosperous future for all Americans.

Less than 2 years ago, Democrat Patty Murray and Republican Paul Ryan proved it could be done. Let's put an end to the games and gimmicks and start putting together a responsible budget.

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