[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 132 (Monday, September 30, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7015-S7018]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want to make a few comments about the 
crisis that is unfolding before us. Right now some colleagues in the 
Senate and others over on the House side are holding the entire 
American economy hostage to make their favorite point on policy. I must 
say that this blackmail against ordinary working class Americans--
threatening to steal whatever momentum our economy has rather than 
build greater momentum and greater job growth--is deeply misguided. 
That is really as polite a way as I can possibly put it.
  Think about what working families have been through over the last few 
years. The deregulation of Wall Street leading to predatory mortgages 
that hurt millions of families, and then the securities that those were 
based on, proceeded to derail our entire economy, hurting millions 
more. Families lost their savings. They lost their jobs. They lost the 
equity in their house.
  All that working families are asking for is a little bit of common 
sense. Don't do further damage to the economy that is struggling to 
recover. Yet certain colleagues here in the Senate and over in the 
House seem to believe that the little people don't matter, the working 
people do not matter, the stability of the foundation for families and 
living-wage jobs doesn't matter because they can play whatever 
political games they want and the only people hurt are ones they do not 
see in their life. Maybe they live in a gated community. Maybe they 
live in a bubble. But I see those people. I see them every day. They 
are the salt of the Earth. They are the workshop that takes America 
forward. They are the small businesses across this Nation. All they are 
asking for is a little reasonableness and common sense.
  Some of my colleagues have said this crisis comes because the 
majority party in the Senate has refused to negotiate. Nothing could be 
further from the truth. Negotiation in the budget process starts with 
each side passing a budget resolution and holding a conference 
committee. But it is Members of the minority of this Chamber who have 
come to this floor at least 18 times to block the start of a conference 
committee in order to work out the budget. I cannot imagine in my 
wildest dreams why they are terrified of there being a conversation 
between leadership in the House and leadership in the Senate, meeting 
with the television cameras on to work out the details of a budget 
compromise. But they seem terrified, petrified, scared to death that 
there will be a conversation between the House and Senate that would 
lead to a compromise.
  So, indeed, there has been obstruction on compromise, and we know 
exactly where it is. They are the same individuals who are trying to 
drive the economy over the cliff right now. Moreover, members of this 
party said let's go further. The Senate has a number. The House has a 
number. But the budget conference committee is being blocked. Let's 
simply accept the House number, and not split it down the middle, not 
insist on our number, let's take the House number. That is going far 
beyond the middle path, if you will. That is a major compromise. If you 
are looking for compromise, it is happening with the leadership of the 
Senate putting forward a compromise that takes the House number for the 
budget. It appears that certain individuals in this body just do not 
want to take yes for an answer.
  I am going to conclude my remarks. I see my colleague, the esteemed 
Senator from Illinois has arrived. I want to close with this notion. 
This is not the first crisis that has been artificially manufactured 
that has damaged the American economy. Let us remember that similarly 
we faced this in April 2011 with the continuing resolution. We faced a 
manufactured crisis with the debt ceiling in July of 2011. We faced the 
December 2012 fiscal cliff that did substantial damage; in March of 
this year, the continuing resolution, which brings us up to right now.
  This is not all. The same individuals who are threatening at this 
moment to drive our economy over a cliff are saying we will do it again 
in a couple of weeks over another debt ceiling issue and when this 
continuing resolution expires a few weeks from now, if we get one done, 
we will do it again a few weeks from now--three crises in a period of 
just a few weeks. If you want to destroy the economy for working 
Americans, this is how it is done, and it is unacceptable. We need a 
bipartisan, commonsense caucus to come together and simply say no to 
those who are trying to create this terrible blackmail using American 
working families in the process.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 
minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are just hours away from a government 
shutdown. I think tea party Republicans saw the ``Breaking Bad'' 
dramatic depiction of reckless behavior last night and thought they 
could put on an even better finale, create even more drama, and cook up 
even more toxic ideas. They thought they could break this government in 
every bad way possible. These tea party antics are the stuff of fairy 
tales. The way the GOP is writing this story at the stroke of midnight 
as we turn the calendar toward October, our government and potentially 
our economic recovery turn into a pumpkin.
  But it is the tea party GOP who are in fantasyland by thinking we 
will allow them to cut off ObamaCare, shut down government, and melt 
down our economy. Democrats are not going to allow them to do this.
  What do the American people want? Americans want our military to get 
paid on time. Americans want our seniors to get the benefits they have 
earned and depend on. Americans want to be able to respond to floods in 
Colorado or wildfires in the West.
  The American people don't want the government to shut down. Americans 
want a business plan that completes this recovery, creates jobs, and 
gets our economy back on track. They want us to work together to 
accomplish this goal.
  What are the effects of the tea party Republican tactics? By forcing 
Congress to govern by going from crisis to crisis, tea party 
Republicans hope to chip away at the bedrock programs that run our 
country and help our people.
  First, the tea party did this with sequestration, which is a fancy 
word for mindless cuts in programs that help ordinary families in our 
country. Now they are going after the ObamaCare law. What is next are 
their enduring targets such as Social Security, Medicare, and the 
safety net programs that millions of Americans depend on. These are the 
same Republicans who want to privatize Social Security. They want to 
turn Medicare into a voucher program. Now they want to reverse the 
progress achieved by the legendary Ted Kennedy, who made it clear that 
in the United States of America health care is a right and not a 
privilege.
  The tea party Republicans are playing high-wire politics with our 
economy so they can take away the social safety net for millions of 
American families. This bill is just a preview of coming attractions. 
Two weeks from now we will be careening to the next crisis, this time 
over whether America will pay its debts. If we do not raise the debt 
ceiling, we will not be able to pay our bills starting on October 17.
  What is the harm of defaulting on our debts? Our Nation's stock and 
bond markets could go into a free fall that will damage the full faith 
and credit of our country, the bedrock of the entire American economy. 
What does that mean? The full faith and credit of the United States is 
in question.
  If you took out a mortgage, had a car loan, bought some furniture, 
and when the bill came due you said: I am not going to pay these bills, 
what do you think would happen? Your credit score would plummet. It 
would throw your financial life into chaos for years. No one would lend 
you money, or, at a minimum, you would be hit with sky-high interest 
payments because of the risk that you wouldn't pay the next time 
either.

[[Page S7016]]

  Americans ran up these bills. We promised these payments. We should 
pay what we promise, and then we need to stop lurching from one crisis 
to another, scrambling to stitch together last-minute deals that only 
last until the very next crisis.
  It is time to end these games. It is time to end the uncertainty. It 
is time to do what we were sent here to do--to get to work creating 
jobs for American families so they can have a mortgage and put their 
kids through school. That is what we should be talking about here, the 
prosperity of all Americans.
  This shutdown today is a preview of a debate over a meltdown of the 
American economy. If, in fact, we go to a debt ceiling and we haven't 
found a way of working together here on the Senate floor, Democrats and 
Republicans, along with Democrats and Republicans from the House of 
Representatives, those who are in the most jeopardy are those who are 
watching us with their mouths open, agape, wondering how their system 
of government can operate this way.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield back the remainder of my 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley). The assistant majority leader.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in less than 9 hours, unless there is an 
intervening effort that is successful, the government will shut down. I 
know people across America are scratching their heads and saying: Why? 
How did it ever reach this point?
  I went through O'Hare this morning--I have done that a lot in my 
life--on my way back to work, and the reaction of people was 
interesting. People I didn't know walked up to me and said: Hang in 
there. Good luck. We hope you can do it.
  I realized people across America are listening and watching this, and 
they are trying to figure out who is right, who is wrong, and what 
difference does it make?
  About an hour ago I was presiding as we took the vote on the latest 
House amendments. In the middle of the vote, my staffer came up and 
handed me an e-mail. The e-mail said there was a House e-mail that was 
circulating, and here is what it said: After the Senate tables the 
House amendments to the CR later this afternoon, and the papers come 
back to the House, we will send it back to the Senate with another 
amendment delaying the individual mandate and ObamaCare for a year and 
affect the Members' health subsidy as well.
  Unfortunately, that message kind of betrays what is going on here. We 
made it clear on the Senate side that we are sending a clean CR, with 
no political strings attached to it, to extend the government services 
and allow them to continue for at least 6 weeks while we try to work 
things out on a bipartisan basis. What we keep getting back from the 
House of Representatives is all sorts of political strings, such as the 
medical device tax, ObamaCare, conscience clause when it comes to 
family planning. All of these are being thrown back to us as conditions 
for us if we are going to fund our government.
  If we want to on the Democratic side, we have the votes to put our 
own conditions on this. I can think of a couple: that the House takes 
up the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill we passed 
months ago here and they have never even addressed in the House. That 
would be a good one, wouldn't it? At least from my point of view.
  How about the bipartisan farm bill we passed twice in the Senate that 
they failed to pass in the House of Representatives for years? Why 
wouldn't we make that one of the conditions? I can think of a few more. 
But we didn't do it. We sent them a clean CR, a clean spending bill, 
and said to them: Let's extend the functions of government.

  John Kennedy's book, ``Profiles In Courage,'' talks about men and 
women who served our Nation and showed extraordinary courage. Some of 
us would like to think that at least once or twice in our public 
careers we get close to that standard. There is no political courage in 
what the House Republicans are doing. They are not standing up, putting 
themselves at any political risk. They are threatening to shut down the 
government to affect the jobs of hundreds of thousands of innocent 
Federal employees. These are people who get up and go to work every 
single day for this country because they love their jobs and they love 
this country and they do a great job every day. They are viewed with 
disdain by so many critics of government, but were it not for those men 
and women and the contribution they make, we would not be the great 
Nation we are at this moment in time.
  At midnight tonight--in less than 9 hours--our government will shut 
down. Many--hundreds of thousands of them--will be told: Don't come to 
work. If that happens, we will be lesser for it--not just the fact that 
we cannot produce the services our government needs to produce to help 
our people, and not just the fact that innocent Federal employees will 
lose their paychecks. Many of them will not get paid for the time we 
are losing.
  But equally important is what it says about us and what it says about 
America. We stand and we say: We are different, and we are proud of 
being different. We are the oldest democracy on the face of the Earth. 
We are, in many ways, different from some other Nations, and we are 
proud of that difference.
  Sadly, at midnight tonight the difference is not going to be 
something of which we can be proud. It is the failure of political 
leaders in Congress to fund the government of the United States of 
America. It is the failure of political leaders in Congress to fund our 
government.
  What this comes down to is very basic. There is a reason why we have 
elections. There is a reason why ultimately the decision on this issue, 
and all the other issues, will be given to the American people. What I 
ask them to do is to watch carefully what is happening in Washington 
and whether they want to continue it.
  Senator Merkley of Oregon came to the floor and talked about the 
beginning of this tea party effort and the first threat to shut down 
the government. This is not altogether new, but it is unusual that we 
face this. Now it is becoming more frequent, more regular, business as 
usual that we are going to shut down the government. That is the tea 
party approach. That is how they get their attention: 21 hours speaking 
on the floor or threatening to shut down the government. I don't think 
that is the answer to America's future. I think it is a problem.
  If you listened to Senator Merkley from Oregon, he talked about the 
fact that we passed a budget resolution in the Senate--I thought it was 
a good effort--to try to figure out what our spending will be in the 
next fiscal year. We came up with a number, and the House came up with 
a different number. The Founding Fathers of the Constitution 
anticipated that and created an opportunity for the House and Senate to 
work out their differences through a conference committee.
  Senator Murray of Washington chairs our Budget Committee. She brought 
this to the floor and asked for unanimous consent to take this budget 
resolution to the conference committee so we could agree. She brought 
that request to the floor 6 months ago. The tea party Republicans 
stood--some of the same Republicans we are seeing now--and objected to 
this meeting. They said: No way. We won't allow this meeting between 
the Democrats and Republicans.
  Senator Murray and her backers, on the committee and off, renewed 
that request over and over and over, and every time the tea party 
Republicans objected. They did not want us to do the orderly, 
constitutional thing of sitting down to work out our differences. They 
wanted a confrontation, and now they have it. We were unable to reach a 
budget number, unable to pass appropriation bills because of their 
objections, and now we face a government shutdown.
  If this is what you want as the ordinary course of business in 
Washington, if this is what you want for America and our Federal 
Government and the good people who work for it, then keep on voting for 
tea party folks. This is their attitude and their idea. This is their 
idea of the new normal.
  Well, it shouldn't be the new normal. America is better than this.
  There is something that is encouraging. There are a handful of 
Republicans who are finally standing and saying: I have had enough of 
it.
  Senator John McCain and I disagree on so many things, and agree on a 
few things, but we are different politically.

[[Page S7017]]

I admire him not just for his service in the Senate but what he has 
given to this country. He came to the floor and gave a 10-minute speech 
after the Texas Senator finished his 21-hour speech. Senator McCain 
made more sense in 10 minutes than in the 21 hours that preceded it.
  He said: I don't like ObamaCare. I voted against it. I want to change 
it, but get real; it is the law. It was found to be constitutional by 
the Court. The President, who authored it, was reelected by 5 million 
votes in America. That is how a democracy works. Those who won't accept 
ObamaCare and want to try to stop it will not accept the verdict of 
this democracy. We need to go forward and prove it. That was Senator 
McCain's speech to us. It was a good speech.
  Upstairs Senator Schumer talked about what we could have done in the 
past. What if we said: Unless all of the Bush tax cuts are repealed, we 
are not going to allow the government to be funded? We didn't do that. 
We shouldn't have done that. It is not responsible.
  I hope this doesn't come to pass. I hope at midnight we don't shut 
down this government. There will be a lot of unhappy people in the 
Federal service, and they don't deserve it. These are innocent people 
who want to do a good job for this Nation. There will be a lot of 
people hurt on the outside because they can't have access to government 
services. There will be things that we will miss doing that will have 
an impact, and we may never know it.
  What impact will it have at the National Institutes of Health if they 
suspend medical research until this is over, just put it off a couple 
of days or maybe a couple of weeks if it gets really awful? Then what 
happens? A delay in finding a cure, a drug, a medical device. All of 
these things make a difference in the lives of a lot of innocent 
people. So it is not an act of courage to play politics with the lives 
of other people, with the future of America, and with the future of our 
economy.

  Yes, this is why we have elections, so the American people can say: 
Enough. We are not going to put up with this anymore. We need to have 
responsible Republicans and Democrats working together to solve our 
problems.
  I think that is why we were sent here, not to lurch from one 
confrontation to the next.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask to speak in morning business for 10 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, after 5 years of being a parent, I have 
gotten used to temper tantrums. It is an unavoidable part of having 
kids. They demand something--they want a second dessert, they want 
another 10 minutes before bedtime--and if they don't get it, they storm 
out of the room. That aspect of early human nature--the inability to 
deal with defeat and the unwillingness to compromise--luckily goes away 
over time as we get older and wiser and more thoughtful--everywhere 
except for Washington, DC.
  By now everybody gets what is going on. As Senator Durbin said, we 
are only a handful of hours away from a government shutdown--another 
manufactured, made-up, totally avoidable crisis. This one is just 
because we can't pass a 6-month continuing resolution. We are having a 
problem just keeping the government open under the exact same rules 
that it has been open because a small set of tea party Senators and 
Congressmen are basically throwing a temper tantrum because they 
haven't gotten their way.
  It is not news to anybody that Republicans oppose the health care 
law. They opposed it back when it was passed by both Chambers and 
signed by the President. They opposed it when the Supreme Court upheld 
the legislation. Their Presidential candidate opposed it when he got 
roundly defeated in the 2012 election. My opponent and the opponent of 
every single Senator who stood for election who voted for the law 
opposed it as well, and every single time they lost.
  Over and over Republicans have made it clear that they don't like the 
Affordable Care Act. They voted 40 times to repeal it or defund it or 
postpone it in the House of Representatives. This is despite the fact 
that today the Affordable Care Act is saving millions of seniors 
millions of dollars because they don't have to pay for drugs in the 
doughnut hole. This is despite the fact that starting in January it is 
going to save millions of people across the country from having to go 
into bankruptcy because they can't afford their health care. But 
Republicans are refusing to vote for a budget that will keep the 
government operating unless this health care bill is stopped.
  For too many of those urging a government shutdown, government has 
just become an abstraction. They have sold themselves on the idea that 
government is so twisted and malignant that shutting it down just 
wouldn't really do anything. After all, if the goal is to starve the 
beast, then what better way than putting the beast into a coma for a 
couple of days or a week.
  But that is not how this works. Government does real things for real 
people. It provides paychecks for 9,000 people in Connecticut. It pays 
Social Security benefits and processes claims for disabled veterans. It 
inspects our food. At the NIH, it comes up with cures for diseases. The 
markets watch whether the government operates because they actually 
know that the private sector works better when the public sector is 
working better. So that is why today the market once again has been 
falling through the floor, as it will if we move forward with this 
madness.
  Just as we don't give in to our kids when they threaten us if we 
don't give them what they want, America cannot reward this ``my way or 
the highway'' approach from the tea party. I have strong beliefs, just 
as my tea party Republican friends do, but I also get that I am part of 
a majoritarian deliberative body. Senator McCaskill and Senator Durbin 
made the point, as did the Presiding Officer. We all would love to 
attach things to this continuing resolution. There are 20 grieving 
families in Newtown, CT, who do not understand why 90 percent of the 
American public wants background checks on weapons and we can't pass 
that in the Senate. I bet some of them would think it might make sense 
for us to condition our support of the continuing resolution on getting 
background checks on gun purchases. Ninety percent of the American 
public supports that. But we are not doing that. That is not how we 
govern--hold the entire Federal Government hostage to get what we want.
  Ultimately, though, this just can't be how this place works. This is 
a 6-week continuing resolution. As the Presiding Officer said, it is 
just going to happen 6 weeks from now and 6 weeks after that.
  I heard that a long time ago this place used to actually be involved 
in the business of running the country. It doesn't feel like that 
anymore. As I sat there on the dais a week ago now watching the middle 
act of Senator Cruz's long, long, long speech, it didn't feel a lot 
different than it has for most days that I have watched the tea party 
over the last several years. It felt as if I were a theater goer.
  What is happening this week really isn't exceptional. It is just the 
latest and worst example of a long trendline away from legislating and 
toward playacting. With rare exceptions usually prompted only by 
deadlines and cliffs and fake crises, we don't do anything here any 
longer. We just dig trenches and we make arguments. We pass fake bills. 
We playact. Occasionally, when the stacks of all the things around us 
are about to come teetering down we stop and we push them back up again 
instead of thinking for a couple of seconds that if we just stopped, 
sat back, and actually restacked those sets of things so they didn't 
come crashing down, we would probably be better off. We just play 
parts.
  There is nobody better at playing their part than the tea party 
Republicans. Their character is recalcitrant, uncompromising, and 
destructive, and we have seen all of that on display this week. If we 
get beyond this crisis, we will just see it once again. But there is no 
curtain call here in Congress after which we can pull back our masks 
and share a good laugh. We are still all going to be left on stage 
tasked with picking up the pieces.
  I think I am past believing that these folks are just going to start 
playing a different role. It is time for the American public to start 
asking some questions about people before they send

[[Page S7018]]

them here: Are you willing to compromise? Are you interested in 
actually running the government? Are you going to score your term based 
on whether you deliver for the American people rather than how many 
Twitter followers you have or how many times you showed up on the TV 
news that week?
  If this government shuts down tonight, it is just because of a temper 
tantrum or, put another way, a really, really bad play, the third act 
of which has gone on way, way too long.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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