[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H144-H145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, it may well be that in the 20th day of this 
crisis we are too close to it, have been too immersed in it to think 
clearly our way out of it. It is actually 25 days, if you consider the 
5 days of the previous shutdown.
  Let us look at what we say we are doing. The other side honestly 
admits that its purpose is to bring leverage on the President. 
Examining that proposition, it is clear that the other side has 
succeeded in bringing leverage as much as they are ever going to do.
  Let me explain why. The fact is that the President has now signed on 
to a 7-year balanced budget. He had not done that before. Having done 
that, it would 

[[Page H145]]
seem to me that the majority would acknowledge that they have 
accomplished what they said was their greatest goal. Moreover, the 
leverage has gone as far as it can go, if I may say so, because, to use 
the words of the gentleman from Texas, Mr. DeLay, from your side, he 
was talking about Mr. Dole: The President can't cave, because to simply 
give in is to reinforce a part of his reputation that he is trying to 
live down. It is time for the majority to declare victory and let the 
Federal workers come back to work, because the leverage rationale has 
been spent. It is over. Declare victory.
  Indeed, it is worse than that. The leverage has yielded a boomerang 
crisis, if you will, my friends, an in-your-face crisis. In the 
beginning the most visible victims were Federal workers, and people 
shrugged. They had not felt it themselves. Now we are beginning to get 
great sympathy for Federal workers and no wonder. When a GS-2, to cite 
a specific example, opens up her paycheck, as she did this week, and 
finds in it $4, then of course you are going to get sympathy from all 
across the country. She is a hapless victim. By the way, the IRS and 
the Social Security did take their share. They left her $4.
  About half of those who do contractual work for the Federal 
Government are out of work. The trade-off that has now become the 
mantra of the other side simply does not work and is itself an outrage. 
Well, we may have to leave these workers at home in order to save our 
children. Let us not talk about trading off one group of innocent 
victims for another. But the boomerang crisis that we better see, my 
colleagues on the other side, very quickly, is a service crisis, not a 
worker crisis. Let me document that.
  On January 2, the States lost $74 million in quarterly grants that 
they use to confront the crisis with abused children, and there are 2.5 
million of those children. By the end of the week, 11 States and 2 of 
the territories, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, which 
of course is the District and not a territory, will run out of funds 
for Federal unemployment insurance. Do my colleagues think they are 
going to get off scot-free as their constituents confront that?
  Twenty-three thousand Americans per day are unable to get passports. 
Many of them are going abroad for business. Twenty-four thousand 
contract Medicare claim workers are not being paid. They will not be on 
the job very long. Your State is going to run out of Medicaid funds in 
January. Are you prepared to take the responsibility for that? One 
thousand workplace safety complaints per day are going unanswered. The 
FBI has ceased to train local law enforcement officers.
  Employment discrimination complaints are no longer being 
investigated. Twenty thousand foreign visitors per day are unable to 
get visas for a loss here of $60 million per day. Do my colleagues 
really mean to inflict this kind of pain on their constituents and 
mine? I think not.
  My colleagues have replaced the main course, the balanced budget, 
with a side dish, and that is the crisis my colleagues have left us 
with. Let us get back to the balanced budget. Let the workers come back 
to work.

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