On the recordMay 10, 2012
I appreciate the words the chairman of the Government Reform Committee said with respect to Federal employees. If you listen to the comments of a lot of these colleagues, they have made Federal civil servants scapegoats, and, in fact, their budget that's before us today does hit Federal employees. So the folks in the intelligence community who helped track down Osama Bin Laden, what do they get under this proposal? A 5 percent pay cut. How about the folks at NIH who are, every day, looking to find cures and treatments for diseases that plague every American family? A 5 percent pay cut. How about the nurses who work in the Veterans Hospitals? A 5 percent pay cut. And yet, you don't cut the direct payment subsidies to agriculture. You don't cut the subsidies to the big oil companies. You just want to whack Federal civil servants. With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who has been working on this issue for a very long time.
