MEDIA RELEASE

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate Friday evening opposing the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” bill passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Akaka’s speech as prepared for delivery:

I rise today to discuss the so-called Cap, Cut, and Balance legislation that has come to us from the House of Representatives.

Congress is a coequal branch of the federal government. I have always believed that it is a forum for informed, bipartisan debate on public policies that we all agree should help us achieve greater equality, opportunity, and treatment under the law while nurturing and caring for our young and vulnerable, producing well-paying jobs, and investing in the future.

That is why I have established good working relationships with my colleagues in both the Senate and the House and on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, this legislation abandons each of these principles.

The challenge facing Congress today is urgent. The stakes are extremely high. Congress must raise the debt ceiling to fulfill our commitments and take meaningful steps to reduce our deficits and debt.

However, the policies needed to achieve these goals cannot be negotiated at the expense of the safety net that our seniors, children, working class, long-term unemployed, and minority communities depend upon. Nor should they come at the cost of good government.

The House legislation falls far short of what is needed. It makes no pretense to bipartisanship. On the contrary, it’s a model of extreme partisanship. Moreover, it threatens to turn a recession into a depression. It will cut, cap – and kill – Medicare. And, it will leave millions of the nation’s sick, disabled, poor, long-term unemployed, and elderly to bear an unreasonable share of the burden of deficit and debt reduction.

These are our citizens who are already struggling. Meanwhile, the “cut-cap-kill” bill would protect, and defend the tax havens and shelters of the wealthiest.

The Balanced Budget Amendment portion of this legislation would do even more long-term harm. It would make future periods of economic weakness worse and restrict our ability to respond. Even though we all know it is not a part of the regular federal budget, the bill would use Social Security revenues and spending as part of the formula to determine whether the federal budget is in balance.

And, if not, Social Security would be subjected to the same cuts as other federal spending. We cannot forget that an important reason Americans expect us to fix our debt and deficit is to preserve and protect their Social Security and Medicare benefits.

I will continue to work to preserve our nation’s social safety net and seek a balance between raising revenues and cutting spending, in which all Americans contribute to the solution.

That said, I will oppose the House bill because it will not do any of those things. This legislation was quickly and poorly considered, leaves the vulnerable exposed to harm, and seeks to weaken Congress’s power to govern. I cannot support it.

Floor statement of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) in opposition to ‘cut, cap, and balance’ as prepared for delivery:

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011.

Rather than taking a balanced approach that requires shared sacrifice, House Republicans have passed legislation that would gut essential services for average Americans while asking nothing of the wealthy and privileged. Such a misguided approach would cost countless American jobs while doing nothing to solve America’s long-term deficit challenges.

Mr. President, in my opinion, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act fails to measure up as a serious proposal to address the structural deficit that our nation faces. It is misguided, and assumes that our nation will pay no price if we fail to invest in our future. These are some of the assumptions of this bill.

Highways will not buckle, pipes will not rust, bridges will not collapse, and there is no need to invest in the next generation of innovators to keep America’s competitive advantage. This bill would gut the very funding we need to revitalize our economy and invest in the future.

Cut, Cap and Balance would render Congress essentially powerless to address revenues, thereby pushing America further down the road of economic inequality by ensuring that the wealthy do not have to share in any sacrifice. And whatever might be said about this legislation, to call it balanced is a cruel irony.

In fact, all of the sacrifice is demanded of the poor and working families. This legislation forces Congress to slash programs that average Americans rely on for education, housing assistance, food safety, safer air traffic control, and clean air and water.

Mr. President, we have an aging population, which means that increasing costs for Social Security and Medicare are a reality that must be dealt with. The Baby Boomers are retiring, which increases the need for Social Security and Medicare.

And while those programs are not subject to sequester, how will we meet the higher costs and at the same time bring down overall spending to 18 percent of GDP, a level that has not been achieved since the 1960s?

My colleagues should not kid themselves: mandating a balanced budget by 2020 while taking revenues off the table will require draconian cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Mr. President, as the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I take particular note of the impact Cut, Cap, and Balance would have on non-defense discretionary spending. A ten year freeze on domestic spending that does not adjust for inflation would have a devastating impact on the ability of all non-defense departments and agencies to carry out their missions.

My colleagues should know that over 10 years, such as cap would amount to a 33 percent cut in real dollars. Such a level of cuts would make it impossible for the United States to compete on a global stage. Our infrastructure, our education system, our technology, everything we need to remain a great nation will be drastically under-funded, or simply not funded at all.

Mr. President, I hope we all understand that we are not talking about ‘nice to have’ things, we are talking about investments that are necessary to maintain the quality of life for the middle class. Education is not optional. Roads and sewers, clean air and clean water are not options. Meeting the basic nutritional needs of our poorest children should not be optional.

This great nation, Mr. President, was built on such investments, made in the best interests of the American people – all the people, Mr. President, not just the wealthiest one tenth of one percent.

I would like to take a brief moment to provide a few specifics about the impact of this Act. While it is not possible to predict specific impacts ten years down the road, it is certainly possible to give examples of what the American people would experience in the near term, as a result of this deeply flawed bill.

In Fiscal Year 2012, Head Start funding would decrease by more than $900 million, eliminating comprehensive early childhood services for over 130,000 low-income children and their families and resulting in the termination of 30,000 teachers, teacher assistants and related staff.

The combined cuts to mandatory programs such as Food Stamps and School Lunch programs coupled with domestic spending reductions contained in this legislation would be a double blow to the nation’s most vulnerable populations.

With these cuts, there would be 13 million fewer meals served to seniors. Let me be blunt, if this bill is enacted, children and seniors in this nation will go hungry in far larger numbers than today.

Mr. President, we all recognize that reducing waste, fraud, and abuse are essential components of getting our fiscal house in order. Every billion dollars we save is a billion dollars we can use to reduce the deficit or better invest in America’s future. And yet this bill would reduce funding for the Internal Revenue Service by some $1.8 billion below the President’s request for Fiscal Year 2012, which would cripple its efforts to find fraud and eliminate waste and abuse.

The IRS could be forced to furlough between 4,100 and 5,000 employees, mostly enforcement agents. Furthermore, a cut to IRS funding would increase the deficit by approximately $4 billion a year beginning in 2013, since every dollar invested in enforcement resources brings in $5 in tax revenues.

Finally, Mr. President, I would note that a cap on the federal budget means that we are unable to make smart choices about our future investments. As an example, the Bureau of Prisons inmate population is expected to grow to roughly 250,000 Federal inmates by 2018, an increase of more than 31,000 prisoners, or 15 percent, over the next eight years.

A growing inmate population coupled with a spending cap for Department of Justice activities will mean further severe cuts to other important functions of the Department of Justice — Federal, State, and local public safety efforts will be cut in order to pay the required costs of housing prisoners.

Mr. President, yesterday 97 Senators voted in favor of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill. The Senate is perfectly capable of producing and passing fiscally responsible appropriations bills that meet the Nation’s needs and that have strong, bipartisan support. The real answer to our fiscal crisis has not changed since this debate began.

We must cut spending in a responsible fashion. We must reform entitlement programs to ensure that they survive for future generations. And we must reform our tax code to allow for sufficient revenues to meet the needs of an aging population and the challenges of a global economy.

Cut, Cap, and Balance does none of these things, and I urge my colleagues to reject this misguided measure.