Congressman Williams: “President Obama’s sequester is bad for America.”
Today, U.S. Congressman Roger Williams (R-TX) spoke on the House floor urging the President to take necessary actions to prevent his disastrous sequester from going into effect.
Williams’ speech can be found here, and his letter to President Obama can be found here.
Portions of his remarks follow:
“President Obama’s sequester is bad for America. There’s no getting around it. Good programs are going to be cut, good people are going to be furloughed, and bad leadership from President Obama is to blame. In the last 4 years, almost every important budget deadline has been met with impasse, and little has been done to enact a responsible budget. Systematic failure to perform the most basic responsibilities of governing has led us to the catastrophic sequestration.
In recent remarks at the White House, President Obama attempted to blame House Republicans – who control only one-half of one-third of the government – for the looming cuts. If there’s going to be a solution, President Obama is going to have to work with his own political party in the Senate and negotiate with the House. Yet all the president has done so far is call for higher taxes again. He got his higher taxes - $600 billion from higher earners, with no corresponding spending cuts – at the end of 2012. It seems he will not stop until every American has to hand over more of their hard-earned money to the federal government, which has a bad track record of spending it.
This is no longer a debate between Congress and the White House to gain the upperhand. This is real, this is serious, and this is the time to take action. In fact, I sent a letter to the President this week urging him to act now and prevent these disastrous cuts from harming our troops, our businesses and our economy. I pray he reads it.
While Friday does mark the sequester deadline, we have until March 27th to do the right thing on behalf of our men and women in uniform, as well as the hundreds of thousands of employees expected to be drastically impacted by the sequester. If the President continues his unwillingness to stop campaigning and start helping the American people who elected him to lead, then at the very least, we need to allow the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs to operate under a budget rather than a continuing resolution. This would give them greater flexibility and put them in the best possible position to absorb these across-the-board cuts. By letting the DoD and VA operate under a budget, these agencies can prevent irreparable damages from the arbitrary sequester cuts.
Mr. Speaker, I represent Texas’ 25th Congressional District which includes a large portion of Fort Hood – one of the largest military installations in the world. The United States Army estimates $291 million in cuts for Fort Hood including nearly 600 civilian jobs, and nearly 30 thousand jobs statewide. This is preventable! And frankly, it’s unacceptable. We shouldn’t have to move a third bill in the House before the Senate finally acts. It's time for President Obama to drop the politics, and campaign speeches, and do something. Putting our public safety, national security and economy at risk by letting the sequester pass without preventative action is reckless and destructive. Our troops, our businesses, and our families deserve better.”
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