[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H12160]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              PLACING THE BLAME FOR A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, it is going to be a sad situation across the 
Nation tomorrow--800,000 Federal employees will be sent home. It is a 
crisis in our Government that is totally unnecessary. It is a political 
crisis that was created here in this Chamber. You have to really 
recount the history of how we reached this point to understand how it 
was totally avoidable.
  You see, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives 
this year and announced they were going to do things differently. The 
first announcement they had was they would pass something called the 
Contract With America, something that Speaker Gingrich had published in 
TV Guide and believed that since it appeared in TV Guide, he had a 
mandate from the American people. So he brought 31 bills to the floor 
of the House of Representatives. The Speaker, Mr. Gingrich, and his 
Republican majority, considered those 31 bills and passed many of them 
and sent them over to the other body.
  The net result of 100 days of deliberation and debate on those 31 
bills on the Contract with America was to have signed into law three 
bills. Three bills, out of 31. So 100 days were wasted at the beginning 
of the session, and it cost us dearly. The Committee on the Budget, 
which had a big job already, was delayed in its deliberations because 
of all the time eaten up by this TV Guide strategy for the Contract 
With America, this so-called PR extravaganza. So the Committee on the 
Budget came in with their report exactly 1 month later.
  The Committee on the Budget has to do its work and pass its 
resolution before the appropriations committees that come up with the 
spending bills can do theirs. So the appropriations committees were 
slowed down.
  The net result was a traffic jam, the end of it on October 1, when 
the Republican majority in the House and Senate were required to 
present to the President 13 appropriations bills to keep government 
running. Six weeks ago, on October 1, they presented three bills. Three 
out of 13.
  You cannot blame the Democrats for that. Republicans are in the 
majority. The Republicans are in control. One of the big problems they 
had was that the special interest groups all wanted to put an amendment 
on each of those appropriations bills. Some of the amendments were 
virtually outrageous. They had one 28 page amendment that they put on 
the Veterans Administration and HUD bill. This 28 page amendment 
abolished 14 environmental protection laws.
  The lobby out here, the corridor, was lined with special interest 
groups and lobbyists in pretty shoes trying to get their amendments on 
the bills so that they could be somehow absolved from responsibility of 
clean water and clean air.
  Well, they managed to do it the first two times. Finally, the third 
time, 54 Republicans bolted from Speaker Gingrich and said ``We cannot 
stand this anymore. We are going to vote with the Democrats.'' And they 
took that amendment off. That is just one bill. It is one explanation 
why only three of the 13 appropriations bills ever made it down to the 
White House.
  So now we come to this situation where the government cannot 
continued to run because Speaker Gingrich and the Republicans could not 
produce appropriations bills. So we passed something called a 
continuing resolution, keeping the government continuing in operation 
while we figure out how to solve the big questions.
  The continuing resolution has been a time honored tradition around 
here. We sent them down to the President, they sign them, the 
government keeps going on for a few weeks while we resolve our 
differences. This time Speaker Gingrich had a little tricky one to put 
in there, 9 lines out of a 53-page bill. And in those nine lines, he 
increased Medicare premiums on senior citizens as of January 1 by 25 
percent. The Speaker knew better. The President said he would never 
sign it. The Democrats opposed it. We do not want senior citizens on 
Medicare paying 25 percent more in their premiums.

                              {time}  1900

  And so the President has said he will veto it. And now we face the 
prospect that the Federal Government will shut down.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a sad situation. It does not reflect well on 
either party. It does not reflect well on the President or on Congress, 
but I think the President was right. The President was right in vetoing 
that bill. There is no reason why we should demand Medicare premiums 
increases as a price for keeping the Federal Government in operation.
  As a matter of fact, the gentleman from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, 
a Republican Senator, today came up with a reasonable compromise, and 
he is a reasonable man. He said let us freeze that Medicare rate and 
keep government in operation while we work toward a balanced budget, 
which we all want to see. That is a reasonable thing. Unfortunately, 
many of the Republican leaders said to him, sit down and be quiet, we 
have another strategy.
  Their strategy, Mr. Speaker, involves not just shutting down the 
Federal Government but also, for the first time in the history of the 
United States of America, we run the potential of defaulting on our 
national debt. Now, none of us like the fact that America is in debt, 
but we are all proud of the fact that when we say the full faith and 
credit of the United States of America it means something. Not just 
here but around the world. That is our integrity. That is our 
reputation. That is our credit rating.
  The Republicans, because they will not pass a debt extension limit, 
are jeopardizing that credit rating for the United States of America. 
That goes far beyond what is necessary. What we need is a bipartisan 
commonsense approach. Stop the political gamesmanship and do it 
immediately.

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