Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, the Senator from Arizona is entirely correct. There is no other legislation that can be brought before us at this time to prevent a government shutdown. As we know, the House of Representatives has gone home for the year. We know without the bipartisan agreement before us, the impacts across the country would be untenable. We have kind of been there. On top of that, if we do not have this budget agreement, the military itself will take another $20 billion hit, so those very military personnel whom all of us passionately care about would be facing layoffs, would be facing uncertainty, would be facing furloughs, would be facing tremendous hardship to themselves and to their families. So, yes, the Senator from Arizona is absolutely correct.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, the Senator from Arizona is correct. I have heard from every single branch of our military services that the impact in 2014, a few weeks from now, would be devastating if the current sequester continues to take place. I would add to the Senator from Arizona, coming from a State where we have a number of military bases, I have heard from the families of those soldiers and airmen and sailors that they are deeply worried about their loved ones and their lives if we do not replace the sequester.

I want to personally thank the Senator for his hard work and his support behind the scenes to help us get to where we are today, because without the Senator's voice in this, it would have been extremely difficult. I carry his voice and many voices into that conference room to take some very tough choices forward so those families, all the way up to those top generals, do not have to enact the further cuts of sequestration.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I would agree with the Senator from Arizona. In fact, the often-touted and quoted Simpson-Bowles Commission report even in this debate over the last day is much more egregious in what they are seeking.

Secondly, I agree with everything he said except for one thing. The Senator from Arizona mentioned that we have 1 year to look at the commission report. It is actually 2 years before this goes into effect. Congress will have time to act. The Senate Armed Services Committee will be looking at the commission report. We will have an opportunity to look at this in its entirety before it is implemented. I truly want to thank the Senator for speaking up for our military, because I know more than any one of us on this floor that when the Senator speaks for the military, he understands the consequences of not enacting legislation today.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I come today to address an unintended inclusion in the compromise deal that was worked out by the bipartisan budget conference and that was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives earlier last week.

As a long-time champion myself of our Nation's veterans and military families, I want to make absolutely sure today that they know a provision included in this deal which mistakenly included disabled retirees and survivors for changes in pension growth will be addressed in short order following passage of this bill. In fact, I am going to be joining with the Senators from Georgia and others after passage of this bill to make that technical correction in a stand-alone bill.

I think all of us know our disabled veterans have made tremendous sacrifices for our Nation and deserve the peace of mind that their benefits will not be adjusted under this compromise legislation. They deserve to know also that government shutdowns and the constant crises that have unfortunately impacted wait times for our veterans' benefits, further growth in the disability backlog, and even jeopardizing their monthly checks should be a thing of the past. That is what is at the heart of this bill.

We are working to ensure the uncertainty and fear these veterans and military families faced last October is taken off the table for at least 2 years. We are working to ensure the government they fought for functions in a way that delivers on the promise we owe all of them.

In furtherance of that effort, this technical error certainly can, should, and will be addressed, and I join with the Senators from Georgia in ensuring our disabled veterans that it absolutely will be.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to first note that every one of the reserve funds included in this bipartisan bill was also included and voted on as part of the Senate-passed 2014 budget resolution. None of this material is new. My colleagues have seen and voted on every one of those reserve funds.

In the 9 months since the Senate passed the budget, I cannot recall, frankly, a single time that a Member came up to me and raised an issue regarding one of those reserve funds.

I similarly would like to point out that reserve funds are not new. The Senate has actually relied on reserve funds to help it carry out its priorities under the annual budget process for nearly 30 years. The authority to include them is specifically authorized in law by section 301(b)(7) of the Congressional Budget Act.

In fact, reserve funds are so common and accepted by Republicans and Democrats alike that Senators actually filed more than 300 of them during the debate on the 2014 budget resolution.

Let me repeat that for everyone. Senators filed more than 300 reserve funds this year, including, by the way, a few from my friend, the Senator from Alabama.

So if there is anything that should be noncontroversial, it should be including some of these reserve funds that were debated and agreed to last spring.

More fundamentally, the bipartisan agreement now before the Senate will ensure that the Senate once again has a budget. That is a good thing. Having a budget and the discipline of enforceable spending levels will strengthen enforcement, not weaken it. If you do not have a budget, you do not have a spending level you can enforce, you lose discipline and the ability to raise certain points of order. We fix that actually in this agreement.

I object.

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Mrs. MURRAY. The American people are sick and tired of the constant crises that we have seen in Washington, DC, over the past few years. They want us to work together, they want us to solve problems, and they want us to focus on jobs, families, and broad-based economic growth. That is why I am so pleased we are now headed to a final vote on the budget agreement that Chairman Ryan and I reached that breaks through this partisanship and gridlock and shows that Congress can function when Democrats and Republicans work together to make some compromises for the good of the country.

The Bipartisan Budget Act puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back those automatic and harmful cuts to education, medical research, infrastructure investments, and defense jobs for the next 2 years. If we didn't get a deal, we would have faced another continuing resolution that would have locked in those damaging automatic cuts or, worse, a potential government shutdown in only a few short weeks.

This bill we are about to vote on replaces almost two-thirds of the cuts for this year to the domestic discretionary investments and, importantly, it prevents the next round of defense cuts that is scheduled to hit in January.

It is not going to solve every problem the automatic cuts have caused, but it is a step in the right direction and a dramatic improvement over the status quo.

This bill builds on the $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction we have done since 2011 with an additional $23 billion in responsible savings across the Federal budget.

Crucially, we protected the fragile economic recovery by spreading the savings out responsibly over the next 10 years and maintained the key precedent that sequestration cannot be replaced with spending cuts alone.

This bill isn't exactly what I would have written on my own--and I am pretty sure it is not what Chairman Ryan would have written on his own--but it is what the American people have called for, a compromise. That means neither side got everything they wanted and both sides had to give a bit.

I am hopeful this deal can be a foundation for continued bipartisan work, because we do have a lot of big challenges ahead of us for our families and communities that we all represent.

As we wind this down and go to a vote in a minute, I especially wish to thank my colleague across the aisle, Chairman Ryan, for his work with me over the past 2 months. He stood with courage, an honest broker, and a tough negotiator, but in the end we were able to come to an agreement and I wish to commend him for that.

I thank ranking member Chris Van Hollen, who worked steadfastly with us.

I thank Leader Reid and all of our leadership for their support throughout this budget process as we worked to negotiate this deal and move it through the Senate.

I also particularly thank the members of the Senate Budget Committee who worked so hard to pass a budget, start a conference, and reach this bipartisan deal--Senators Ron Wyden, Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, Bernie Sanders, Sheldon Whitehouse, Mark Warner, Jeff Merkley, Chris Coons, Tammy Baldwin, Tim Kaine, and Angus King. They were great members of our Budget Committee, and I thank them for their diligent work this year, as well as all of the Republicans on our committee who worked so hard with us.

Finally, I thank all of our staffs who have spent so many hours on putting this together.

From my office, Budget Committee staff director Evan Schatz; our deputy staff director John Righter; Budget Committee communications director Eli Zupnick; my chief of staff Mike Spahn; and all of our staff members, too numerous to mention right now, but I want each and every one of them to know how much I appreciate the intense work they put into all of this. I will insert all of their names in the Record.

I also thank Chairman Ryan's office: Budget Committee staff director Austin Smythe; policy director Jonathan Burks; and many more who helped us be successful.

I also thank David Krone from Leader Reid's office and Kris Sarri from the Office of Management and Budget.

I thank Director Doug Elmendorf, Bob Sunshine, Pete Fontaine, and all of the staff at the Congressional Budget Office for their innumerable hard work and support.

We are at the end of the time. I urge all of our colleagues now to support this Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013. We are about to put jobs and economic growth first and, most importantly, we are going to give the American people back some certainty that they do deserve.

Has all postcloture time expired in the motion to concur with respect to H.J. Res. 59?

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