Madam President, I am not sure where the Obama administration is getting all of its talking points on the sequester, but the President might want to consider hiring a fact checker. Even before the sequester took effect, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared that schoolteachers were getting pink slips. A few days later he had to walk those comments back. He said he was referring to a single school in West Virginia. But when the Washington Post contacted the superintendent of that school, he said not one teacher had gotten a pink slip because of the sequester. Then President Obama suggested that all of the people who keep the Capitol clean would be suffering a pay cut. But that wasn't true either, according to Capitol Superintendent Carlos Elias. We have been repeatedly told that the sequester would trigger drastic layoffs of Federal workers. Yet on Monday alone the Federal Government posted literally hundreds of job advertisements. Finally, just yesterday, when asked to provide evidence for the claim that 70,000 children would be denied access to Head Start because of the sequester, the White House had no details. While the President has been out there playing Chicken Little, Members of Congress have been waiting for the White House to send over its budget. The law requires the President to transmit a budget by February 4, and we have been now advised his budget will not be forthcoming until March 25.…
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I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.





