MY TURN: We Must Act to Avoid Another Recession
Before joining Congress seven weeks ago, I spent a decade working in economic development, helping businesses to create jobs. I know that when government works well — making smart investments and fostering a friendly and predictable business climate — it can help companies invest in new equipment and hire new workers. What government does and doesn’t do can often have a direct impact on the ability of our economy to grow.
Unfortunately, action — or, rather, inaction — in our nation’s capital right now is hurting our economic recovery, creating uncertainty that damages private industry and our region’s largest employer.
Unless Congress acts before March 1, huge across-the-board cuts will be applied to large parts of the federal budget. These cuts, known as sequestration, aren’t strategic. They don’t target wasteful programs. And they won’t improve our economy.
In fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, sequestration threatens to cut our economic growth in 2013 by half. The cuts could put our fragile economy back into a recession.
This will have serious consequences in our region.
If sequestration occurs, thousands of workers at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard will be furloughed — essentially forced to work four days instead of five, resulting in a substantial cut in pay. They won’t be working less because there’s less to do. In fact, shipyard workers told me that these across-the-board cuts will not only hurt now but will cost the American taxpayer more later to catch up in critical maintenance our ships need — important work that is done by DOD civilians and contractors.
At a time when we’re shifting our national focus toward the Asia Pacific region, these dangerous cuts could hurt our ability to effectively move forward with a 21st century national security strategy.
And there will be a real, measurable human cost to the cuts in our region. As the Navy is the largest employer in our region, many of our friends and neighbors will face tough financial decisions as they struggle with less income. And because they’ll have less money in their pocket to spend at our local businesses, we’re all going to be feeling the effects.
It’s not just the military facing deep cuts. The across-the-board nature of these cuts means that there’s no strategy involved here. Every functional area of government will be impacted. Imagine your family budget treating housing and food the same as your budget for moviegoing, magazine subscriptions, and vacations. During tough financial times, you wouldn’t just cut everything by an equal amount. You would prioritize.
Unfortunately, under sequestration, there’s no prioritization. No strategy. And the impacts are damaging.
Cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration will mean fewer air traffic controllers and more flight delays. Cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture mean fewer food inspectors, more plant shutdowns, and higher food prices. Cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers means that construction and dredging activity will halt all over the country. And 600,000 women and children will be impacted by cuts to food assistance programs designed to prevent hunger.
We’ll see reductions in funding for education, for Head Start, reduced investment in research and innovation, and fewer resources for small businesses — the foundations of our long-term economic growth.
With just a week left until sequestration kicks in, the threat of these cuts is already having an impact on private industry. Last week I held a round-table discussion with small business owners and developers. Every single person at the table expressed that the uncertainty caused by across-the-board cuts and these numerous fiscal cliffs (now resembling a “fiscal mountain range”) is hindering their ability to grow and succeed.
The time for partisan games is over. Congress cannot and should not allow across-the-board cuts to negatively impact our economy and national security.
Congress needs to work in a bipartisan way on a real plan to deal with the federal budget. These nonstrategic cuts need to be replaced with a balanced, bipartisan plan that addresses our long-term debt and supports short-term job growth. Our problem is too big to tackle by stopgaps and kicking the can down the road.
We cannot simply rely on only cutting our way out, only taxing our way out, or only growing our way out. We need a comprehensive, balanced approach that doesn’t adversely affect our fragile economic recovery, that protects our national security and obligations to our seniors and most vulnerable, and that addresses our nation’s long-term financial sustainability.
With partisan bickering and political dysfunction causing Congress to be about as popular as cockroaches these days, I know getting the House and Senate to reach a bipartisan compromise will be challenging.
But we have to get this done and we should stop all other work until we find a solution. The president and many outside groups have already put together proposals that could serve as the framework for a compromise.
Let’s start there.
This won’t be an easy journey but it’s one I’m committed to seeing through. The American people need Congress to stop playing the blame game and get to work.