Providing for Consideration of H.J. Res. 48, Additional Continuing Appropriations Amendments, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what my friend from Massachusetts said when he was talking about the cuts in H.R. 1 to research and development. We find in New Jersey, which is the third-largest State in the country for health care research and development, that every time the Federal Government spends a dollar, it creates five or six or seven private sector jobs. See, that's the problem here. The Republicans are not focusing on the issue, which is job creation. The problem with their continuing resolution--the long-term one that they adopted and they say that we should just pass in the Senate and send to the President--is that it actually destroys jobs. If you listen to the things that are actually being cut, these are the things that deal with investments in the future. R&D, research and development, infrastructure that allows commerce and allows us to fix our roads and provide for mass transit and fix our ports.

The gentleman from Massachusetts mentioned Peter King from New York, who actually criticized H.R. 1 because he said that it really hurts port security. Well, how are we going to trade? How are we going to export products if we don't deepen our ports, if we don't provide for safe ports? And the same thing is true with education. H.R. 1 basically cuts back on education, on Pell Grants for students to go to college. All the investments that make sense because they actually create jobs are going to be eliminated with H.R. 1, with this Republican resolution. I mean, it is extremely shortsighted.

I feel like I was here 2 weeks ago with the same people, my colleague from Georgia on the Republican side. We just can't continue to go 2 weeks, 3 weeks at a time. You are actually going to go out of session and have a vacation or a break next week. Well, if you are really serious about this--because we know that the Senate basically couldn't get cloture on H.R. 1--why don't you, instead of going home next week, just spend the time here trying to work out something responsibly with the Senate so we can keep the government going? I mean, that's what we need to do. We need a consensus.

You have one point of view on the Republican side. The Democrats have another point of view. We have a Democratic President. We are never going to get through this budget year unless we actually sit down and have some consensus and some compromise. What I hear my colleague from Georgia saying is, Take it or leave it. We voted on H.R. 1. That's our Republican bill. It has all of the cuts. The Democrats don't like it because we believe strongly it is going to kill jobs. But you say, Take it or leave it. It can't operate that way. I don't believe that our constituents in November expected us to just come down here and say, Take it or leave it. They want us to go to work. They don't want us to take next week off. They want us to create jobs.

And right now, the uncertainty with these 2- or 3-week short-term spending bills is creating a lot of havoc. I think eventually it's going to create havoc on the financial markets. It is already creating havoc within the Federal agencies because they don't know whether they are going to be operating from one week to the next. It's not good for the country. It's not good for the economy. You may disagree, but we need to work together.

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