On the recordJuly 31, 2012
I thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, we have got a lot of hard work to do in about the next 3 months around this place. I want to talk tonight about a process that we have brought upon ourselves so that now we are faced with what, I think, could be one of the greatest catastrophes in the modern history of the United States--and that is almost the complete destruction of our military through a process called ``sequester.'' We use a lot of big words around this House, and half of the people who sit in this room on a daily basis don't even know what it means, to be honest with you, but they know what the process does: across-the- board cuts at every level of government. The reality of these cuts is that, at least in the current makeup of our government and with so many of our expenses in this government being mandatory spending and what we call ``entitlements,'' the lion's share automatically falls upon the military, on the Defense Department. Even more critical to this particular agreement, which was made in the earlier part of this year when we had one of our many shutdown-the- government risks that have come upon this body in the last couple of years, the White House with the President, along with the majority leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, met to discuss how to keep from having a shutdown of the government and how to raise the debt ceiling so we could continue to operate this government.…
