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[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 120 (Monday, September 10, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H5749-H5754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                              {time}  1920
                          UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Woodall). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. 
Courtney) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  Here we are today on September 10, 5 weeks since Speaker Boehner 
pushed

[[Page H5750]]

through a motion to recess for 5 weeks at a time when our Nation faces 
so many challenges, so many ticking clocks in terms of must-do items, 
some of which have already cleared the U.S. Senate, like the farm bill. 
And yet despite that need out there from the country, looking for some 
action and certainty out of this Chamber, the majority again said, 
Nope. We're going home for 5 weeks. And we're going to leave dairy 
farmers whose price supports expired on August 31 left hanging in the 
breeze--despite the fact that the U.S. Senate has passed a farm bill 
with Dairy Security Act provisions that reforms the price structure, 
saves the taxpayer money, and provides some horizon so that the folks 
who are getting up every morning and milking cows could have some 
certainty in terms of whether or not their business, their operations, 
have any sense of future.
  They are losing money every day in New England. The feed costs, the 
high energy costs. And the Dairy Security Act, which was part of the 
Senate farm bill, and by the way was also incorporated in the House 
Agriculture Committee in its committee bill, will, in fact, provide 
that sense of security and future for dairy farmers. Yet the Speaker 
put through a motion to recess for 5 weeks.
  August 31 has come and gone, and these guys and women are out there 
and they are faced with total fear, and those are the faces that I saw 
when I was home in August about the fact that this Congress, 
particularly the House of Representatives controlled by the 
Republicans, refused to take up a farm bill despite the fact that we 
had weeks of time to do it before the expiration of the price supports 
for dairy farmers.
  Obviously, American agriculture is far broader than just the dairy 
industry. It also includes commodity crops in the great Midwest, which 
are facing a historic drought right now where the security of crop 
insurance is so important.
  Joining me here this evening to report in from the Midwest is a great 
Congressman from eastern Iowa, my colleague and friend, Congressman 
Bruce Braley, and I would like to yield to him to talk about what the 
lack of a farm bill means in your great State.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I thank my friend for yielding.
  The thing that I think we need to focus on at the beginning is 62 
days. It's been 62 days since the House Agriculture Committee reported 
a strong, bipartisan farm bill that passed out of committee after 
extensive debate and numerous amendments, and that's on the heel of the 
Senate Ag Committee passing a farm bill with strong bipartisan support, 
that passed the entire Senate where it's incredibly difficult to pass 
anything these days with a strong bipartisan vote.
  So I think the question on the minds of many of my constituents in 
Iowa's First District is when is the House going to vote on a farm 
bill, which in the past has always been a bipartisan priority of the 
House and the Senate.
  Now, my district in Iowa has been burning up all summer. Almost every 
part of the First District of Iowa has been classified as extreme 
drought conditions. Now, what does that mean? Well, I will tell you 
what it means to the eye when you go out and visit the farms that I 
visited back in the First District in July and August.
  Corn that normally fills up an entire ear, and the ear is typically 
about this long, now is coming out on ears that are this long that if 
you're lucky has a fraction of the kernels per ear that you would 
normally see in a typical Iowa cornfield. Stalks of corn were burning 
up in July and had to be chopped because they have no value other than 
the insurance policy that was in place on those crops because commodity 
insurance has been available to those farmers.
  Soybeans were more fortunate because they weren't burning up and got 
late rain that allowed them to mature, and we're hopeful that the bean 
crop will not be as devastated to the extent that the corn is.
  This is profound, it's real, it's going to have dramatic implications 
for the cost of food in this country, for the cost of fuel in this 
country. And while we sit here and do nothing in the House to get a 
farm bill reported out into conference committee, farmers back in my 
district are looking at what's going to happen this fall when they face 
dramatically reduced yields. Then we roll into the period of time this 
winter when they're buying crop inputs for next spring. All of these 
things have enormous ripple effects on our domestic economy.
  Then you look at what's happening with our nutrition programs, which 
will also be expiring on September 30. And we know how many people 
depend on those nutrition programs. Who are they? Most of them are 
seniors, the elderly, who depend on those food stamp programs. It's 
people who are disabled and on fixed incomes and working and are 
underemployed right now.
  So this failure to act is having profound consequences for the people 
I represent in Iowa. I have done 14 listening posts on the farm, food, 
and jobs bill in Iowa this summer, and we get people from across the 
spectrum who will be dramatically impacted if Congress fails to act.
  You look at the rural economic development title of the farm bill. It 
has profound implications throughout this country, and it's not based 
on whether a district is blue or red or purple. Every single district 
in this country is impacted by our failure to act.
  That's why I'm glad to be here tonight talking about these 
implications, and I hope to be bringing to the floor soon a discharge 
petition that has been delayed because of the inaction on this bill but 
that will give every Member of the House of Representatives the 
opportunity to go down and record on a piece of paper whether they want 
to see a farm bill brought to the floor for a vote, an up-or-down vote, 
and I encourage all of my colleagues to take a serious look at joining 
me in signing that discharge petition so we finally get action on the 
long overdue piece of legislation.

  Mr. COURTNEY. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I'll be happy to yield back to my colleague.
  Mr. COURTNEY. I think your last point about the fact that we are now 
at a place where the Democratic minority is finding itself in a 
position where they really have almost no choice but to seek a 
discharge petition.
  The fact is is that this week the majority, Speaker Boehner's office 
and the House Majority Leader, Congressman Cantor, issued their agenda 
for the week which lists the bills that they are proposing to take up 
for votes. And for those listening around the country, I think it's 
important to remember that the Republican majority controls that 
agenda. I mean, that is something that we have no control in our caucus 
of adding or subtracting.
  Looking at that agenda this week, I was hoping when I got back from 
the 5-week break that the Speaker's office would have responded to what 
is happening all over the country, which is a hue and cry demanding 
action on a farm bill.
  But the fact is, as I think the gentleman from Iowa knows, is that 
there is nothing on that agenda that indicates we are going to take up 
a farm bill this week. Incredible. I mean, just amazing, that, you 
know, at a time when the American Farm Bureau has been doing a circuit 
throughout the Midwest holding hearings, holding events, drawing 
attention to this fact. Even in New England and Connecticut, which is 
not viewed as a sort of agriculture powerhouse, I mean the fact is I 
had roundtables with the Connecticut Farm Bureau who are just 
dumbfounded that an issue like this could get sort of swept up in just 
sort of the do-nothing record of the Republican majority in this 
Congress.
  I also think it's important for people to remember the Senate farm 
bill which passed, as the gentleman indicated, on a bipartisan basis 
actually saves the taxpayers $23 billion over the next 5 years.

                              {time}  1930

  It came in with a lower cost than the baseline from the last farm 
bill, so it actually helps the deficit situation.
  The House Agriculture Committee bill that you mentioned that got 
reported out also reduces the deficit. Again, I think it went a little 
too heavy in terms of the reductions on the nutrition side, but I am 
confident that that can get worked out in a conference committee if the 
House would take up a bill and send a bill to a conference committee.

[[Page H5751]]

  But the fact of the matter is is your leadership, in terms of 
bringing out a discharge petition, is probably not something that you 
woke up thinking you'd love to do 6 months from now, but it's really an 
act of necessity because this majority will not even send a signal that 
anything is even being planned to take up a bill this week.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. I think the thing that is so disturbing to so 
many of us who represent parts of rural America that are heavily 
dependent on agriculture is this has never been a partisan stalemate in 
the past. Usually, the farm bill bogs down over regional differences 
over how you structure a bill that's going to get the necessary support 
to get the necessary votes on the floor. There is strong bipartisan 
support here in the House among our colleagues.
  Earlier, Congressman Welch initiated a Dear Colleague letter--they 
got 60 signatures--calling on leadership from both the House Democrats 
and Republicans to come together, get this bill to the floor, bring it 
for an up-or-down vote so that people get to see who's willing to put 
their vote behind crafting a bipartisan bill that can get support and 
move this country forward. That's the disturbing thing is I'm confident 
that there would be broad support across this Chamber to get a bill on 
the floor, to have an amendment process, to allow people to offer 
amendments to improve the bill. That's what happens in committee. 
That's what happened in this particular case. But when we can't even 
get a bill to the floor--and everything we're hearing is that there's 
no plan to bring a bill to the floor before the election--and then you 
look at everything that's being pushed back into the so-called lame 
duck session--which you know, Congressman Courtney, is one of the worst 
times to bring people together with everything going on--it's very 
frustrating, because this is a bill that could have and should have 
been passed before the August recess, and that's why it's so 
frustrating.
  Mr. COURTNEY. This week, I think we are going to see the impact 
outside of the beltway, because it's my understanding that over 30 to 
50 groups are going to be converging on Washington, advocates of 
American agriculture ranging from the real traditional American Farm 
Bureau to the Farmers Union, to specific commodity crop groups who, as 
you point out, sometimes have some pretty heated disagreements about 
regional issues and about allocations within the farm bill; and they 
may still have some today in terms of the way the Senate bill was voted 
out in the House committee, but they all agree on one item, which is 
that it is time for this House of Representatives to act.
  This is not a debate club here that people were sent to, and it's 
also not a place where political strategists can sort of play games 
with people's lives about how the agenda is handled. I mean, this is a 
place where so many sectors of American society depend on us, again, at 
the end of the day, rising to our constitutional duty, sometimes having 
to really compromise on some very difficult measures, but, nonetheless, 
we have a duty to act. We have a duty to really make sure that the 
people who sent us here can rely on the fact that we're not here just 
to fight and sort of try and get political gain out of every issue that 
comes to the floor.
  Again, what the Connecticut farmers were saying to me when I was back 
home is that they just cannot believe that the farm bill has now become 
a partisan issue, but the Republican leadership controlling this House 
apparently believes it is. They won't even bring up a bill for a vote.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I think one of the things that's helpful is 
to talk about some misconceptions about the farm bill. This isn't just 
something that affects farmers. At every one of my farm bill listening 
posts, I started off by pointing out that in 1900, my State of Iowa had 
11 Members of Congress in the House of Representatives and Florida had 
two, and there were about 40 percent of Americans at that time who 
lived on farms. After the next election, we will have four 
Representatives from my State of Iowa in the House and Florida will 
have 28; and now, less than 1\1/2\ percent of the American population 
lives on farms. So that illustrates why it's such a big challenge 
anymore to put this bill together.
  But when you look at who showed up at my farm bill listening post, it 
wasn't just people engaged in agriculture. There were plenty of farmers 
there. There were representatives from the corn growers, the soybean 
producers, the cattlemen, and the pork producers, but there were also 
people there from Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, the Sierra Club, 
Trout Unlimited. There were people from nutrition groups who were 
involved in providing food to underserved portions of the community. 
There were people there from school lunch programs impacted. There were 
people from rural electric cooperatives who serve not just rural 
America today, but even medium- and small-size cities. You had people 
there from all these different groups who came together, from energy 
groups who were part of the energy title of the farm bill.
  Everybody who eats in this country is impacted by what's in this 
bill. Everybody who puts fuel in their vehicles is impacted by what's 
in this bill. For many people in America, this is one of the most 
important economic development bills we pass every 5 years.
  The reason we do it every 5 years is because when you're involved in 
the types of operations that produce the food, fiber, and fuel we 
depend on, you don't just do it on a week-to-week, month-to-month 
business plan. You have to know right now what you're going to put in 
the ground next spring and what it's going to cost to do it and what 
type of risk you're taking on in order to be successful and continue in 
that operation.

  And so you can't just kick the can down the road--which we are so 
good at in this body--and hope it all works out in the end, because for 
many farmers that will be too late. That's why it's time to come 
together and work in a bipartisan manner to solve this problem and get 
it done, because the American people are depending upon us. If we don't 
do it until after the election, it's too late.
  Mr. COURTNEY. To follow up on that point, one of the aspects of this 
farm bill which I think is actually so exciting is that there's a major 
reform in terms of how we're going to reduce, to some degree, the 
American taxpayers' liability for crop production in this country. We 
are definitely eliminating crop subsidies once and for all, direct cash 
payments to farms, in both the Senate bill and in the House Agriculture 
Committee bill. We are eliminating direct payment subsidies. That's 
where the largest portion of savings are actually being generated, the 
$23 billion in the Senate and the roughly $33 billion in the House 
bill. We are basically going to be using much more of a crop insurance, 
risk insurance model where the farmers have a little more skin in the 
game. The producer is going to have a little more skin in the game and 
the taxpayer is going to have a little less.
  From almost every angle, when you look at the hard work that's been 
put into the measure this year in terms of, again, lowering costs, 
trying to wean the system away from direct cash payments, doing some 
important, I think, exciting reforms in terms of promoting farmers' 
markets and marketing specialty crops--which, again, I'm sure Iowa is 
just like New England and California and other places where there has 
just been this renaissance of local agriculture. Food security issues 
and the growing awareness about the fact that healthier foods for 
school cafeterias or family dinner tables is something that people are 
just really engaged in as almost never before.
  This farm bill promotes all of that positive change in terms of 
nutrition habits all the way to school cafeterias, but also, again, 
helping producers deal with a different structure in terms of how their 
business model is going to run. As you point out, you can't do that 
with a 3-month extension or a 9-month extension or a 12-month 
extension. We need a 5-year farm bill. We need something exactly along 
the lines of what the Senate produced on a bipartisan basis.
  Again, it is just incredible that this leadership, the Republican 
leadership, doesn't hear what is out there right now both on the 
producer side and on the nutrition side. People want this Congress to 
get this item done, and it just should not be a partisan issue.

[[Page H5752]]

  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. One of the other common themes that I heard at 
all of my listening tours--and this is uniform across the country, 
whether you're living in Connecticut or Iowa or California or any other 
part of the country--the average age of the farmers in Iowa is 59, and 
we have a lot of people who are nearing the end of their farming 
careers. We need to have opportunities for young farmers and young 
people who want to get involved in agriculture to get their foot in the 
door.
  So that's one of the exciting things about this farm bill is, for 
young farmers and beginning farmers who may be doing it as a second 
career, they may be working at a John Deere factory in Waterloo and 
farming on a part-time basis because it's in their blood, it's what 
they love the most out of life, but to give people that opportunity to 
get started, we have to be focusing on some innovative new ways of 
allowing them to earn an income from farming.

                              {time}  1940

  Whether that's specialty crops, which you mentioned earlier, whether 
it's dealing with orchards and other types of new and innovative ways 
of raising money from production agriculture, all of those things are 
at a standstill if this bill doesn't move. And that is one of the 
reasons why it's inspiring, at a time when so much that focuses on 
Congress is about partisan bickering, that there is actually an 
enormous opportunity here to reach across the aisle to our friends on 
the other side and say, join us, make this happen, bring this bill to 
the floor. We will work with you to improve this bill and get it to a 
conference committee so that we can get an up-or-down vote on the 
future of agriculture in America.
  Mr. COURTNEY. Just to kind of put the period on that is that right 
now the House Republican leadership is looking like we've only got 8 
days of real, full floor action for the whole month of September. 
Again, incredibly, after basically leaving town and passing a motion to 
recess, the Republican leadership, now that we're back, has only 
scheduled 8 full session days, which, again, really shows why your 
discharge petition for the farm bill is so critical in that we really 
need to get this thing moving, because there clearly will be a 
conference. There's going to be some disagreement with the Senate. But 
on the fundamental structure of the bill there really isn't. I mean, 
the reform of subsidy payments, there's overlap in both bills.
  The savings that that will generate, the dairy issue which I 
mentioned earlier, how we are again going from a historic change in 
terms of an industry that's had total cash payment subsidies to a risk 
insurance model, which, again, commodity crop folks like yours have 
dealt with that for decades. We're now putting dairy into that same 
model.
  But 8 days does not give us much margin for error in terms of the way 
this place operates. And again, that's the Republican schedule which 
came out.
  I know, as far as yourself and myself and our colleagues on our side 
of the aisle, you know, we're prepared to roll up our sleeves and stay 
here as long as it takes, and frankly, we've got other issues which I 
think all of us would be more than happy to plunge into, whether it's 
the fiscal cliff, whether its sequestration, whether it's the postal 
reform bill, which the Senate has passed, whether it's the Violence 
Against Women Act that again, incredibly, even though law enforcement 
leaders all across the country are imploring Congress to move on the 
Violence Against Women Act, the leadership hasn't set a conference 
group to get that bill done.
  This is stuff that should be just baseline givens, in terms of just 
running the country. And yet we have got an agenda this week which, 
other than maybe doing a CR to keep the government from closing on 
October 1, that's it in terms of what the Republican leadership has put 
forward.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I think that one of the things that we need 
to make sure everybody understands is, as of September 30, September 
30, which is just a couple of weeks away, there is no farm bill. We 
revert back to a 1949 farm bill that nobody in this country wants to 
see happen, including the Secretary of Agriculture, who would be given 
extraordinary powers that were given under that old farm bill to 
determine markets, to determine prices, to select winners and losers.
  It would be a horrible situation. And that's why the American people 
are depending on us to put aside our partisan bickering, to come 
together and solve this problem. And that's why I'm looking forward to 
working with my Republican colleagues to get support for this discharge 
petition and work to get signatures so that we can bring this bill to a 
vote on the floor, which is what should have happened before August 1.
  Mr. COURTNEY. And it is a shame because really, if you look at the 
U.S. economy right now, particularly in terms of balance of trade, 
agriculture is probably the brightest spot, even with all the 
challenges that have happened this summer. I mean, export of American 
farm products, whether it's beef or commodities, is actually really 
helping the balance of trade for this country.
  There was a story this morning in The New York Times about Mexico, 
about how their rising middle class now--I mean, made in America, 
particularly for food products, is something that the consumer market 
is really stampeding towards.
  And again, to allow this September 30 deadline to happen and to 
suddenly, you know, have complete almost chaos in terms of pricing 
mechanisms, in terms of, again, insurance payments, in terms of cash 
payments, which, presumably, would somehow have to continue, really 
would hurt growth in this country, which American agriculture has 
actually been helping sort of pull up for other sectors.
  I want to thank the gentleman for joining me here this evening to 
talk about that point.
  Again, there was a Bloomberg News report also earlier today that said 
that telemarketers now have a higher approval rating than the U.S. 
Congress. And again, the colloquy we just listened to this evening 
about the farm bill, it's no wonder. The work schedule which the 
Republican majority has put forward over the last 18 months would make 
Homer Simpson blush.
  I mean, the fact of the matter is we've had repeated recesses. We've 
had a work product, in terms of actual numbers of bills that have been 
discussed and brought forward on the floor, at historic lows. We've had 
a shutdown crisis in April of last year where, literally, the country 
was on the edge of its seat in terms of whether or not the U.S. 
government was going to shut down last April of 2011.
  We had, for the first time in American history, the prospect of a 
default on the full faith and credit of this country, when the debt 
limit issue was run up to, again, the final seconds before Treasury 
would have no authority to sell bonds to pay the bills for this 
country. First time in American history we confronted that prospect.
  Under Ronald Reagan, the debt limit was extended 18 times with little 
or no fuss, yet this majority has intentionally sort of pushed these 
sorts of pressure points over the last 18 months, 2 years, to score 
political points. And that's something which Mitch McConnell, the 
Senate minority Leader, made very clear was the number one priority of 
the Republicans in Washington: to cripple this President and to deprive 
him of reelection in a second term.

  And now, as we stand here on September 10, we are now looking at 
another cliff that's facing this country, the fiscal cliff which is at 
the end of December, the Tax Code reverts back to pre-2001, raising 
taxes for middle class families all across the country.
  President Obama has put out a plan which would protect the income of 
all Americans up to $250,000. And I want to repeat that. Every American 
would still retain their tax cuts from 2001 up to $250,000. For those 
who are fortunate enough to be above that threshold of adjusted gross 
income, then the rates would revert back to the Clinton era for people 
to pay a little bit more. And the Congressional Budget Office has 
scored that change as helping the deficit by roughly 800 to $900 
billion.
  You know, a couple of nights ago we had an opportunity, as a Nation, 
to listen to William Clinton, to President Clinton talk about his 
record in office, when his fiscal policies put the Nation's public 
finances in the black for the first time in decades.

[[Page H5753]]

  I mean, a lot of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties could not 
sort of remember a time when America was paying its bills and paying 
down its debt. President Clinton presided over policies which got us to 
that point.
  It was also an economy which produced 22 million jobs. We had 
unemployment rates below 4 percent in many States like my own, in the 
State of Connecticut, where unemployment was between two and three 
percent in 1998 and 1999. And he did it in way that was fair and 
balanced.
  And the speech that he gave in Charlotte the other night reminded us 
that when you actually invest in the middle class, when you make sure 
that middle class families have the tools to raise their family, to 
educate their children, to cover their health care needs, to buy a 
house and afford a house, to provide the means so that seniors over 65 
won't be bankrupted by health care bills, the fact of the matter is 
that's the formula for success for growth in this country.
  And, again, the 1990s is Exhibit A for the success of those policies, 
which the President, when he gave his acceptance speech, reemphasized 
that, again, he is willing to extend the tax cuts for income up to 
$250,000 for all Americans, rich and poor, that we would revert the 
rates back to the Clinton era, which now even Mr. Romney is talking 
very positively about the Clinton years and praises President Clinton's 
tenure in office.
  Well, he ought to adopt the plan that President Clinton is 
suggesting.

                              {time}  1950

  That's a plan which will put the public finances of our country back 
into better balance and which will provide a more solid footing. Even 
more than that, if we were able to come together with that reasonable 
compromise--averting the fiscal cliff--it would give this country and 
particularly the business community the confidence of knowing that 
their tax exposure--that the fiscal status of this country--is not 
literally going to be driven up to the cliff, up to the brink, over 
periods of short, monthlong time periods, just as it was in 2011 and 
2012.
  That really, unfortunately, sadly, is the legacy of the 112th 
Congress under Speaker Boehner's tenure. That's why telemarketers are 
more popular than Members of the U.S. Congress, which is according to 
the Bloomberg News report that came out earlier today. We have a 
leadership which has shown itself quite willing to defy all of the 
hopes of the American people that we would get people working together 
and compromise and extend a horizon for people so that they can make 
decisions to invest and to hire. Rather, we have seen under the 
direction of folks like Mitch McConnell that the number one priority is 
not what matters for the American people; the number one priority is to 
bring down this President.
  That was the number one issue everywhere I went when I was home over 
the last 5 weeks: When are we going to see some compromise out of the 
Republican leadership to come together for fiscal policies that will 
avert the fiscal cliff? When are we going to come together to diffuse 
the sequestration chain saw that's sitting out there on January 1, 
which is going to cut through the Federal Government both on the 
defense side and on the nondefense side?
  I think it's important to remember nondefense interests, whether it's 
hospitals or medical providers, are looking at a 2 percent across-the-
board cut in Medicare payments if sequestration goes into effect. 
Education, whether it's K through 12, whether it's student loans, are 
also going to get hit with that chain saw. We're going to see it with 
the National Institutes of Health, which is doing incredibly exciting 
work in terms of coming up with cures for cancer by using genome 
research. That chain saw is going to cut through NIH in terms of the 
great research projects that are going on in that institution. We would 
also see the chain saw hit defense.
  In industry after industry in which you need to have a horizon, 
whether it's building F-35 fighter planes, whether it's building 
surface ships down in Virginia or nuclear submarines up in the State of 
Connecticut, the fact of the matter is the sequestration option, as 
Secretary Leon Panetta--the Secretary of Defense--has said, would be 
catastrophic for the national defense of this country. There are 
proposals on the table which would avert the implementation of 
sequestration. I sit on the Armed Services Committee. We had a hearing 
with leaders from the aerospace industry. We had leaders from the 
administration--the head of the Budget Office, the Undersecretary of 
Defense, Ashton Carter, who handles budget policy.
  If you look at the budget which President Obama put out in January 
and if you look at Paul Ryan's budget resolution in 2011, what you will 
see is, in fact, there is overlap between the two that could easily get 
us to the point of diffusing the sequestration chain saw that I 
mentioned out there. We have to hit a target of $1.2 trillion in terms 
of deficit reduction to avert sequestration from going into effect. If 
you look at the savings from the drawdown in Afghanistan, which Paul 
Ryan and the Republican majority put in their budget resolution in 
2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it totals roughly 
about $800 billion, and that's post-2014. That was in the Ryan budget. 
President Obama, in his budget plan, had exactly the same measure, 
which would save roughly $800 billion. If the two sides would come 
together and agree that we could pass a measure that locks in those 
savings, then you've really gotten to about two-thirds of the 
sequestration target set up under the Budget Control Act.
  We can do this. We can do this this week if people would actually, 
basically, put down their cudgels--again, 8 weeks away from an 
election--and say: Let's do something that's for the benefit of the 
country; let's eliminate that uncertainty that's hanging out there; 
let's tell those firms that are wrestling with whether or not they have 
to issue WARN notices, layoff notices, to their workers because of 
sequestration sitting out there on January 1.
  Let's come together. Let's get this thing done. Let's look at the 
President's budget, and let's look at Paul Ryan's budget. Let's find 
the areas of common agreement, which do exist, and let's get this thing 
fixed so that the American economy is not facing another one of these 
runups. Unfortunately, the majority back in April of 2011 was willing 
to push this country to a government shutdown, and later, in August, 
was willing to default on the full faith and credit of this country. 
Let's not do that. Let's allow the American people the opportunity to 
have some security, which is that their jobs, that our national 
defense, that health care providers, that educators, that people who 
are in the critical areas of research and development over at NIH are 
not going to have the rug pulled out from under them because of 
sequestration, which was part of a package from which Speaker John 
Boehner proudly announced he got 98 percent of what he wanted. Again, 
when the Budget Control Act passed, the Speaker was interviewed, and he 
was boasting about the fact that the Republicans got 98 percent of what 
they wanted. Within that package was the sequestration mechanism. Mr. 
Ryan, the candidate for Vice President, actually also publicly boasted 
about the fact that sequestration was a compromise which the two sides 
agreed to.
  So everybody has got their fingerprints on it. The fact of the matter 
is that it's sitting out there, and it's creating uncertainty in the 
U.S. economy. There are measures that are both within the Ryan budget 
and the Obama budget which overlap and from which we could easily 
implement a compromise to diffuse that sequestration chain saw that's 
sitting out there. All it takes is the willingness of this Chamber, led 
by the Speaker, who is now trying to distance himself from the deal 
that he embraced back in August of last year, to come forward and say, 
okay, let's sit down and hammer this out. You could do it on the back 
of an envelope within a matter of a day or two in terms of the areas of 
agreement that exist between the Obama budget and the Ryan budget.

  The failure to do that--the failure to bring up a farm bill, the 
failure to bring up a postal reform bill, the failure to bring up a 
Violence Against Women Act for conference and for final resolution, the 
failure to implement budgets on the health and labor and education 
subcommittee, which the majority just basically, I guess, decided 
they're just not going to do--is why Bloomberg News came out with

[[Page H5754]]

their report today saying that Congress is now less popular than 
telemarketers.
  This is one of the most despised Congresses in American history, and 
it has been led by Republican leaders who, again, have shown that they 
are more interested in trying to weaken this President than in trying 
to strengthen our country. This is with regard to issue after issue, 
whether or not it's the farm bill, whether or not it's the postal 
reform--where we have a system that is literally now technically in 
bankruptcy--whether it's the Violence Against Women Act, whether it's 
getting budgets done in regular order, whether it's diffusing 
sequestration, whether it's averting the fiscal cliff.
  We went home for 5 weeks without acting on any of these measures 
because of a recess motion that the Speaker put forward. The country is 
basically sitting there, waiting to see whether or not we have either a 
short-term future or a long-term future, which all of these issues are 
so critical to determining. We are going to be watching this agenda 
over the next few days. What we saw today from the majority leader's 
office indicated no farm bill, no postal reform bill, nothing related 
to any measures to try and deal with sequestration. We have seen a do-
nothing agenda this week by the majority following 5 weeks of being 
back in the districts.
  The American Farm Bureau was doing a cross-country barnstorm about 
the fact that we need to get that measure passed so we can create some 
certainty and horizon for the men and women who are getting up every 
morning and milking cows and planting crops and harvesting crops, those 
who desperately, particularly with the drought conditions in the 
Midwest, need to have some certainty that there is going to be crop 
insurance in place to make sure that they are not going to go bankrupt.
  We have a measure which passed in the U.S. Senate--it's a bipartisan 
bill--which saves the taxpayer $23 billion, and yet we have a 
leadership which won't even bring up a farm bill for consideration. The 
bill that came out of committee wasn't perfect, but it is a measure 
which we need to act on to send to conference so that the agriculture 
sector of this country can have some confidence about what kind of 
future they're going to have beyond the next few weeks or until 
September 30, which is when the law of this country reverts back to 
that of the 1949 farm bill.
  So that's the message which I certainly heard on my break and that 
Mr. Braley heard on his break. I think we're going to hear it this week 
when representatives of commodity crop groups--the American Farm 
Bureau, the American Farmers Union--are going to be gathering in the 
U.S. Capitol and demanding action so that we can at least allow one 
sector the ability and the confidence to know that they have some 
future, both short term and long term.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

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