On the recordFebruary 17, 2012
I yield myself 1 additional minute. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether most of you know this. I saw a gentleman from Florida who's been here for a couple of months pontificate that I didn't know anything outside of the Beltway. I was the sponsor of the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act. And George Bush Sr. signed that act, and we worked with his OMB to get it. And what does it say? Federal employees cannot get a raise unless the private sector gets a raise. We're precluded from getting a raise unless the private sector gets a raise. And what does it further say? That the private sector--which is the economic cost index, by the way, in case you want to know exactly what the statistic is--says, we're going to take a half a point less. So what have you done in this bill, unnecessarily? Because you're going to freeze their salary for a third year in a row. Bowles-Simpson said do it for three. But Bowles-Simpson said, Everybody ought to share, everybody. We ought to get $1 trillion in revenues, $1 trillion in cuts. Everybody. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has again expired.
