Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, this afternoon we will vote to pass a budget for the next 2 years. That sounds really good when we think about actually getting a budget for the next 2 years. I support this budget because I think it provides the certainty our businesses and our economy need and that our families need. It replaces some of the reckless across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, and ensures--perhaps most importantly--that we won't have another government shutdown.

The alternative--allowing this budget to fail and setting up another government shutdown--is simply unacceptable. We saw the impact the government shutdown had on our economy, on the people who depend on vital services, as well as on our national defense and our military readiness.

So while this budget is not perfect--it is not something I would have written; I am sure it is not something Senator Murray would have written. But the budget deal struck by Senator Murray, the chairman of the Budget Committee in the Senate, and Congressman Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee in the House, is a product of bipartisan compromise--something we need a whole lot more of in Washington these days. It represents a small but important step forward for our government and for our economy.

While the budget we are going to vote on today is not perfect, I do believe it is a step forward. It doesn't close a single corporate loophole. It doesn't extend unemployment insurance, which I would like to have seen for people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. That is probably going to cost our economy about 200,000 jobs. And there are provisions included in the bill that I think are misguided and need to be fixed. But the fact is, this is a step forward also in addressing sequestration in a way I think is absolutely critical to anybody who does business with the Federal Government or with companies and families who are dependent on services and on contracts with the Federal Government.

I was at BAE Systems in Nashua, NH, on Monday. I heard from the employees there through their leadership how important it was to have a budget for 2 years to provide some certainty for the company so that they knew what programs they were working on--they do defense contracting--and they could count on, that would provide certainty for them, which is very important. Because one of the comments we have heard on the defense side of the budget is that the cuts from sequestration were having a very detrimental impact on the readiness of our military, on our men and women who are serving, and on the men and women who work for the Department of Defense.

We have seen it in New Hampshire at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where we saw furloughs of people at the shipyard. We saw the impact the uncertainty as a result of sequestration was having and has been having on the ability to know what they are going to be working on, and to be assured the work will be there in the future. We have seen it with our National Guard in New Hampshire, where the training they need to have to keep people current is being affected, where people were furloughed as a result of those sequestration cuts. This is legislation which will address that in a way that is critical to our national security and critical to the men and women who serve in our military.

There are provisions in the bill I think need to be fixed. I am very concerned, as so many other people in this body are, with the impact of the bill on military retirees. I am disappointed that Congressman Ryan was so committed to including this provision in the compromise bill. But one of the things I want to speak to this afternoon is an effort I am working on with a number of my colleagues here in the Senate to try and fix that provision--to try and address the negative impacts the bill might have on military retirees' benefits, because what the bill does is include an unnecessary reduction in benefits for military retirees under the age of 62. I think there are lots of other ways we can find budgetary savings rather than cutting those retirement benefits for the men and women who have served our Nation in uniform.

The good news is that this provision does not go into effect for another 2 years, so we have time to fix this. We have already heard from the chairman of the Armed Services Committee that he is interested in trying to address this provision as we take up the Defense authorization bill in the coming
year, but I am ready to get to work right now to address the provision.

Yesterday I introduced legislation, the Military Retirement Restoration Act, with 15 of my colleagues which would replace the military retiree benefit cuts by closing a tax loophole some corporations are using to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. These corporations set up shell companies in tax havens to avoid being considered an American company even though they are controlled and operated on American soil. I think most Americans would agree this kind of tax avoidance is unfair and that we should close this tax loophole rather than reducing military retiree benefits. This is just one idea. I am certainly open to other solutions. I hope we can continue the bipartisan work that began with Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan and that we saw again in the vote to end the filibuster on this bill--that we can continue to work in a bipartisan way to replace the cuts for military retirees' benefits and we can do it in a way that is smart, but that we can move forward to end the uncertainty, to get a budget in place for 2 years, and to make sure we address the devastating sequestration impacts we have seen since March, the automatic cuts and the impact they are having on the domestic side of the budget and on the defense side.

I see Senator McCain on the floor. I know earlier on the floor he talked about hearing from every single uniformed service leader of the four armed services, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about the impact and further effects that sequestration would have on our national security. That is testimony itself of the need to move forward to get this budget deal done, and to come back and revisit the concerns we have about other provisions.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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