[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 3, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4-S5]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          A BULLY IN CONGRESS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, first of all I commend Senator Dole and 
those leaders on the other side of the aisle who yesterday made it 
possible to pass a clean CR. I am sorry we did not do it sooner. I wish 
it had been done sooner. But I commend and applaud the Republican 
leadership and those Members of the Senate who allowed this to go 
forward.
  Mr. President, I grew up in a small town in southern Nevada. When I 
was in the eighth grade, there were six kids in the class. That was one 
of our bigger classes. In the school at that time there was a bully. He 
was an eighth-grader and everyone in the school was afraid of him. If 
they were not afraid of him they worked something out with him, so that 
they could live with him.
  We rarely had new people come to school there, but there was a young 
boy who came to school, an eighth-grader, somewhat small in stature, 
who came from someplace in Arizona. His name was Gary. He was a quiet 
young lad. And he was pushed around by this bully for 3 or 4 days, a 
week, 2 weeks. Finally this young man said I have had enough of this 
and we are going to settle this. And this young boy agreed to fight the 
big bully. Everyone knew the bully would win, everyone except Gary. And 
they engaged in fisticuffs and the young man, like one of the heroes in 
the books we read as young kids, won the fight. The bully was all 
through. He no longer pushed anyone around.
  The reason I mention that, we kind of have a bully running around 
Congress. It is in the form of 73 Republican freshman Congressmen. They 
have suddenly gotten the stature that they can push everybody around. 
Mr. President, there are 535 Members of Congress, 435 House Members. It 
seems to me that leaves about 360-plus Members of the House who should 
be able to do pretty much what they want to do. Mr. President, 73 
should not a bully make; 73 should no longer be able to push a body of 
535 people around. The time has come, as when Gary came to Searchlight 
Elementary School many, many years ago, to stand up for what is right.
  What is right is to allow people to go to work and to be paid for 
working. I think it is absolutely unreasonable and unconscionable that 
the American taxpayer would be told: Yes, we are going to pay these 
people someday in the future. We are going to pay them, but they do not 
have to work for the pay.
  Please, somebody tell me how that is rational? How is that 
reasonable? We are saying, ``Go ahead and stay home, do not work, and 
we will pay you anyway''?
  Or, we have another deal floating around. You can come back to work 
but you cannot buy any pencils, cannot buy any gas for cars. You 
basically cannot do anything.
  Mr. President, I suggest that people of good will, both Democrats and 
Republicans, should follow the lead of the Republican leadership in the 
Senate, what took place in this body yesterday, and do what is right. 
What is right is to pass a clean CR and get on with our business. Allow 
people to go back to work.
  Some people say an ongoing Government shutdown is a good thing. I 
say, tell that to people who want to get a visa to come to the United 
States. Thousands of them every day want to do that and they cannot do 
that. Does 

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that matter? Of course it matters, because those people who come here 
spend around about $3,000 in businesses and retail stores around here. 
Students trying to get home need to have paperwork processed in our 
Embassies overseas, and that cannot be done. Foreign exchange students 
want to come here to study. They cannot do that.
  One Member of this body suggests that no one even noticed the 
shutdown and we ought to keep the Government partially closed. I say 
that is foolish. Whoever said that has not been out of the beltway long 
enough. Say that, that the Government shutdown does not mean anything, 
to Meals on Wheels. What is Meals on Wheels? Meals on Wheels is people 
who are shut-in's, and they are allowed to stay at their homes as a 
result of Meals on Wheels. If Meals on Wheels is shut down, these 
people are going to have to go into rest homes, extended care 
facilities, and cost the taxpayers even more. Meals on Wheels allows 
people their independence, their ability to stay at home. But for Meals 
on Wheels, our rest homes, our convalescent centers, our extended care 
facilities would be burdened even more than they are.
  For someone who says we ought to keep it shut down, what about our 
Superfund cleanup sites? We have now Superfund cleanup sites that are 
being cleaned up. We just had a big celebration because the final Love 
Canal payment was made. We have 30 Superfund cleanup sites that are 
going to be shut down in the next 24 hours; shut down. That not only 
involves stopping the cleanup, it costs a lot more money to get them 
cranked up again. So people do care if the Government is shut down. 
They care about the thousands and thousands of people who cannot go to 
our national parks. They cannot go fishing, and small retail merchants 
at entrances to these parks are screaming for help. They depend on 
these national parks to earn a livelihood.

  This shutdown has nothing to do with agreeing to a balanced budget. 
We could go back to the process of the appropriations bills which were 
not passed. We could pass blame on why they were not passed. The fact 
of the matter is they were not passed, and there is no reasonable, just 
cause for this Government shutdown and not allowing people to go to 
work. In fact, we are paying them anyway.
  Agreeing to a balanced budget plan and allowing the Government to 
operate are two entirely separate issues. There is simply no linkage. 
There should be no linkage. Attempts to make one solely contingent upon 
the other is really a form of legislative terrorism. The Federal 
workers are being used as negotiating chips. In order for one side to 
be able to declare unconditional victory, these people are being used 
as pawns. This simply is not right. They are not part of the best 
equation leading to a balanced budget, and it ought not to stop them 
from going back to work.
  What is the current impact of the shutdown?
  Six hundred thousand elderly Americans may lose their Meals on 
Wheels. That is a large number of people.
  States have lost $74 million in grants for child protection programs. 
Child protection programs, this is not welfare. These moneys are used 
to deal with more than 2\1/2\ million cases of child maltreatment each 
year.
  Eleven States have exhausted their funding for unemployment 
insurance.
  The Federal Housing Administration is unable to process 2,500 home 
loans and refinancing each day of the shutdown. There are 2,500 each 
day.
  More than 1,000 workplace safety complaints have gone unanswered. We 
receive an average of about 240 calls each day to EPA's hotline for 
drinking water contamination information. We have people who are 
complaining that their water is contaminated. These are calls going 
unanswered.
  Five other hotlines which receive thousands of calls each month are 
shut down, depriving the public of potentially critical information on 
pesticides, toxic substances, asbestos in schools, and other public 
health information.
  Three hundred and eighty-three thousand people each day are being 
denied access to our national parks--almost 400,000 people a day. And 
some say it does not matter?
  As Senator Dole said yesterday--enough is enough. It is time to end 
this folly and stand up to this bully. A few jabs and a left hook would 
end them real quick.
  This, Mr. President, should end immediately. The bully should be put 
down, and put down quickly.
  Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia is recognized.

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