[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 132 (Monday, September 30, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7050-S7053]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I wish to say a few words to try to 
reflect what I think tens of millions of Americans are feeling at 11:25 
tonight with the threat of a government shutdown in 35 minutes.
  What I want to say is that this discussion is not about ObamaCare at 
all. What this discussion, debate, and conflict is about is that our 
Republican friends in the House are trying to annul the elections that 
took place last November. Some of them were shocked that Obama won and 
that he won by 5 million votes. They haven't gotten over it. They were 
shocked they lost two seats in the Senate. They haven't gotten over 
that. They were shocked they lost some seats in the House.
  What they are saying to the American people tonight is: Maybe we lost 
the Presidential election. Maybe we lost seats in the Senate and in the 
House. It doesn't matter. We can now bring the government to a 
shutdown, throw some 800,000 hard-working Americans out on the street, 
and we are going to get our way no matter what.
  I think that is a horrendous precedent to be established for this 
body. Let's be clear. If we surrendered to that hostage-taking tonight, 
without a shadow of a doubt these guys would be back 2 weeks from 
today. At that point they would say to us: Here is our laundry list of 
demands. If you don't give us what we want, we are going to bring down 
the financial system of the United States of America, bring down the 
world financial system, and if it leads to a worldwide recession, well, 
that is the way it goes. But what is most important is we get our way 
and we don't care about the repercussions.
  Next year I can see these same guys coming to the floor of the House 
and saying: You know what. We want to abolish Social Security. We think 
Social Security is a bad idea, and if you don't allow us to do that, we 
are going to stop the government again. And on and on it goes.
  Ultimately, what we are dealing with tonight is an extraordinarily 
antidemocratic act. Every Member of the Senate has strong feelings. 
Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But when they are in the 
minority--they do not control the White House, they do not control the 
Senate--they cannot force the American people to give them what they 
want.
  The irony is that because we have folks in the Republican Party in 
the House who believe we should abolish Social Security, end Medicare 
as we know it, privatize the VA, eliminate the Environmental Protection 
Agency--they do not believe that the function of government is to 
protect the interests of the vast majority of the people. So these guys 
are sitting and saying: My God. The government may shut down. What a 
great idea.
  If you don't believe the EPA should protect us from pollution, then 
isn't it a good idea that we not have an EPA starting tomorrow? If you 
don't believe in veterans health care, isn't it a good idea that we 
should slow down the processing of veterans' claims?
  So for these guys who do not believe that in a democratic, civilized 
society we should have a government which represents the people, then 
from their point of view what is happening is, in fact, quite good.
  What particularly angers me, and why the American people have such 
contempt for what we are doing in Washington is as we speak--everybody 
knows this--the middle class in this country is disappearing. The 
Census Bureau study came out last week--if you can believe this--median 
family income, that family right in the middle of American society, is 
earning less money today than it earned 24 years ago. All of the 
increases in technology and productivity doesn't mean anything.
  Poverty is at 46.5 million, and that is highest on record. Youth 
unemployment is 20 percent. Real unemployment is 14 percent. What do 
the American people want us to be doing? Everybody knows what they want 
us to do. Every poll gives us the answer.
  They want us to start creating the millions of jobs this economy 
desperately needs. They want us to raise the minimum wage because they 
know millions of people in this country cannot make it on $8 or $9 an 
hour. They

[[Page S7051]]

want us to improve our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, our 
bridges, and our wastewater plants. They want us to bring about real 
tax reform. One out of four major corporations today is not paying a 
nickel in taxes, and they want us to change that as well.

  In my view, for the future of this country, we cannot allow a handful 
of rightwing extremists to hold this Nation hostage. The American 
people have to stand tall and tell them that, yes, in a democratic 
society, people have differences of opinion. Yes, we can make 
improvements in ObamaCare. But we don't go forward by trying to destroy 
or bring the U.S. Government to a halt.
  I think it is important for the American people now to stand and 
demand democracy here in Washington, and tell a handful of rightwing 
extremists they cannot get their way by holding this government in a 
hijacked manner.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, do I need to request a specific amount 
of time in which to speak? Are we under any rules?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senators are permitted to speak for up to 10 
minutes each.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to express 
my feelings this evening.
  Quite frankly, I was one of the optimists in this body. Many of my 
colleagues have been saying the determination to run our economy over a 
cliff is so powerful, we are going to end up with a government 
shutdown. I kept saying, I don't think so. I think in this Senate and 
across the Capitol in the House there are reasonable folks who know 
that this type of brinkmanship is doing intense damage to our Nation, 
and I don't believe we will end up there. So here is my faith in the 
common sense of a collection of 435 Members of the House and 100 
Members of the Senate--my faith in their reasonableness. Apparently, 
that faith has been misplaced, because we are now just 27 minutes away 
from a government shutdown. And to what point?
  We have just heard from the House leadership they want to have a 
conference discussion over the budget. Well, certainly, so do we. Six 
months ago, we passed a budget. The Senate passed a budget. We sought 
to have a conference committee to resolve those two budgets as a common 
foundation for a set of spending bills--our appropriations bills--and 
our Republican colleagues blocked that budget conference committee. 
They have come to this floor 18 times and blocked the dialogue 
necessary to take the conversation forward over our budget and spending 
plan. That is what led us here tonight. The obstruction didn't start a 
week ago or 2 weeks ago; it started 6 months ago, in not allowing a 
common conversation.
  I am deeply disturbed about the profound dysfunction that now grips 
this body. I first came to the Senate when I was 19 years old as an 
intern for Senator Hatfield. When legislation was brought up, it would 
be debated, there would be a simple majority vote; sometimes we won, 
sometimes we lost. We then send a bill over to the House. Then we have 
a conference committee and we get on with things. We make decisions. We 
test ideas. Sometimes those ideas work well and we keep them and 
sometimes they don't work so well, and we either amend them or throw 
them out or the public says, the bums who brought us those ideas that 
didn't work, we will throw them out. We had a completion of the 
democratic circle.
  We don't have that completion now because we can't have a simple 
majority vote. Our colleagues have so abused the filibuster process; 
the courtesy of letting everyone have their say is to never let us get 
to a final up-or-down vote. So instead of 12 appropriations bills being 
passed year after year after year, we have zero this year. We only had 
one in 2011-2012, only one.
  Citizens across the country are seeing this and saying, what is wrong 
with the Senate and what is wrong with the House? The House has its own 
form of supermajority: the Hastert rule. They are saying, We are not 
going to put on the floor things we know will pass unless they belong 
to the ideology of the far right, because we know that right now, if 
the Speaker of the House wants to put on the floor of the House the 
bill passed by the Senate--a clean, simple extension of a continuing 
resolution--it would be adopted. The leadership does not believe in 
allowing a vote in that Chamber, just as a minority of colleagues here 
in this Chamber have blocked us from having a simple majority vote time 
and time and time again.
  We need to have a more substantial conversation about how to make 
both Chambers work better. But in the near term we have to find a path 
in which we stop careening from crisis to crisis.
  Let's say, in the final 23 minutes now before midnight, that we were 
able to find an answer to pass a continuing resolution. Let's say we 
were able to do that. Is there no harm done? Well, I wish that were the 
case, because there has been a lot of harm done; because what 
businesses know across America is that this process of brinkmanship, of 
hostage-taking, of threatening to throw the economy over the cliff is 
happening time and time and time again. Already, Members on the House 
side are saying, Well, let's not only make these arguments tonight, 
let's make them in a couple of weeks over the debt ceiling. The debt 
ceiling--the decision on whether to pay the bills we have already 
incurred; the decision on whether to honor the good faith and credit of 
the United States of America.
  President Reagan spoke on this multiple times, telling folks, We 
don't mess with the good faith and credit of the United States. His 
team undoubtedly recognized that when we do so, we raise the interest 
rates, we endanger the dollar as a reserve currency, we weaken our 
purchasing power around the world, and we do deep damage. But that 
reasonableness, that common sense that we don't take hostages and we 
don't threaten to destroy the economy that is going to hurt the middle 
class is gone.
  I live in a working class community. Folks don't have a lot of 
savings. They have been hit hard. They lost a lot of their savings in 
the 2008 meltdown, a meltdown that came from deregulatory actions, that 
allowed predatory mortgages and securities based on predatory 
mortgages. They know that governance matters. They know we could create 
a lot of jobs if we could pass those bills for low-interest loans, for 
energy saving renovations that would put a huge amount of the 
construction industry back to work. That bill passed here in the 
Senate, but the House hasn't taken it up. They haven't passed it.
  They know we would have a lot more jobs if we invested in 
infrastructure. China is spending 10 percent of their GDP on 
infrastructure. Europe is spending 5 percent of their GDP on 
infrastructure. And what are we spending here in America? We are 
spending 2 percent--not enough to repair the infrastructure that is 
wearing out across America, that needs replacing, let alone 
establishing infrastructure for the next generation. In a 10-year 
period, 2 trips to China, I saw Beijing go from bicycles to a bullet 
train. That is what happens when a society spends 10 percent of GDP on 
infrastructure. We build the economy of tomorrow for the generation of 
tomorrow that is going to thrive in that city.

  When we underinvest, we imperil the future. When we underinvest in 
education, we imperil the future of our kids, and we are certainly 
underinvesting in education. But for each of these policy issues we 
have to be taking on, we can't succeed if a small number in the Senate 
and in the House can paralyze this process, can go to extraordinary 
lengths to basically hold hostage and damage the United States of 
America.
  This process must end. The Senator from Vermont who spoke a few 
moments ago said, If we yield to this hostage-taking now, we will see 
it time and time and time again in the future. We will see the threat 
to end Social Security, et cetera. Well, we are not going to go in that 
direction.
  The House has said they want a conference. Great. Let's not do so at 
the same time we are taking down the economy. So put the Senate 
resolution on the floor of the House right now, with 20 minutes left, 
give it an up-or-down vote, pass that bill so that we have just these 
few short weeks, from now until November 15, to hold that conference 
and to work out a deal without taking the American economy down with 
ObamaCare.
  We wait for common sense and reasonableness to return to a dialogue 
so

[[Page S7052]]

that we can have a legislative process the American people can believe 
in, because we are tackling the big problems facing America. But as of 
tonight, with now 18 minutes to go, we do not have that process, and 
that must change.
  Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, absolutely.
  Mr. LEVIN. The Senator just made a reference to the fact that the 
Speaker of the House has refused to put the Senate resolution up for a 
vote in the House of Representatives. It seems to me this has not been 
adequately illuminated to the public. It is not just that we insist 
that there be a clean CR--which we do, because we don't want every 
other issue that people feel passionate about to be insisted upon as 
the price of keeping the government going. Each one of us has issues we 
feel very passionately about. But I don't know any of us--at least on 
this side--who have said that unless we pass, for instance, an 
infrastructure bill--unless we pass a bill that includes background 
checks for people before they can buy an assault weapon--I feel very 
passionately about that. But the idea that we or any of us on this side 
of the aisle would say the government is going to close unless we get 
our way on a particular issue that we feel passionate about is 
absolutely anathema to us. Nonetheless, there are a few folks who are 
willing to do that.
  But when we say we insist we have a clean CR--in other words, that it 
not be linked to some issue that some faction is insisting upon--what 
we are really saying is something even deeper than that, more basic. We 
simply want them to vote on a clean CR. We are very confident it will 
pass if there is a vote, because it will have bipartisan support.
  For some reason over in the House, bipartisan support for a bill is 
now anathema. Apparently, it is called the Hastert rule. The Republican 
leaders over there say they are not going to pass any bill that relies 
upon any Democratic votes, which is the exact opposite of what 
bipartisanship should be. Over here, we rely on votes from both sides 
of the aisle for just about everything we pass. But over there they 
have this policy now, which is the most partisan kind of policy one 
could imagine. If someone could design a partisan policy, it would be, 
We will not have any reliance on the other party for votes; only our 
party can be relied upon for votes. We are not going to pass anything 
which depends upon the other party. That, to me, reeks of partisanship. 
Whenever I hear the Speaker or any of the Republicans in the House talk 
about bipartisanship, the first thing they ought to do is get rid of 
the Hastert rule, because the Hastert rule guarantees partisanship. It 
bakes partisanship into the process over there.
  But back to the narrow point I wish to ask the Senator about: 
Tonight, as in previous nights, all we are saying is not just we insist 
upon a clean CR, which is not linked to some faction's passion, which 
in this case is getting rid of ObamaCare; what we are saying is vote on 
the Senate CR. Just put it up for a vote. We are confident it will 
pass. But does the Senator agree it is even something less than saying 
it must be a clean CR that we are insisting upon? What we are saying 
is, vote on a clean CR. We are very confident it will pass, but put it 
up for a vote. Does the Senator agree with that?

  Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely. I appreciate the point the Senator is 
accentuating. When the Senator says this has not gotten enough 
attention, he is absolutely right. The House has refused to have a 
budget resolution pursued--a continuing resolution that does not have 
extraneous policy attached to it. They have absolutely said they will 
not take the Senate version, which did not put on the things the 
Senator and I might wish to attach, and did not put on the things my 
colleagues from across the aisle might wish to attach. It said: Let's 
keep the government open. Let's keep it operating, using, by the way, 
the budget number proposed by our colleagues in the House.
  So if our colleagues in the House say, wouldn't it be great if the 
Senate would compromise with us, well, we went farther than a 
compromise. We did not say: Let's split the difference between the 
Senate number and the House number. We will take their number. And 
let's get rid of these extraneous policy issues and then put it up for 
a vote. I think it is a simple request to make.
  Doesn't it make sense to give a bipartisan group the opportunity now, 
with just 14 minutes left, to actually end this process of driving our 
economy over a cliff?
  Mr. LEVIN. At least vote as to whether to do it.
  Mr. MERKLEY. At least have that vote.
  Mr. LEVIN. Is it also not true that we have voted twice on the House 
continuing resolution? We have rejected it, but we voted on it.
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague is exactly right. They sent it to us and we 
voted on it.
  Mr. LEVIN. All right. They have not voted once on what we have sent 
to them.
  Mr. MERKLEY. The Senator is right.
  Mr. LEVIN. That is not something you have to go to conference about. 
That is something which is sort of kind of fundamental. We have voted 
twice on your proposal. We have rejected it. You refused to vote on a 
Senate proposal. Why? Because you are afraid it will pass with some 
Democratic votes. That is anathema to the House of Representatives 
Republican leadership now to pass legislation that depends upon 
Democratic votes. And at the same time they talk about bipartisanship, 
they have that fixed, rigid rule that they will not depend on 
Democratic votes to get something passed in the House of 
Representatives. The first step toward bipartisanship in the House 
would be to end that approach.
  But I thank my friend from Oregon. It is amazing to me that the 
refusal of the House of Representatives to even vote on the Senate 
proposal which we sent to them has had such little play in the media 
because I think if the public understood that, they would then--without 
any doubt--instead of it being 60 to 30 that it is the Republicans who 
are bringing this government to the brink of closing down, it would be 
80 to 10, when the public understands that it is the refusal of the 
Republican leadership in the House of Representatives to allow a vote 
on the Senate proposal.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes.
  Mr. LEVIN. I thank my good friend.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, we are at the verge of the midnight 
hour here, and what is playing out is a challenge to the very essence 
of our government, and it is a challenge both at home and abroad. I 
will speak to that in a moment.
  I was in the other body, in the House of Representatives, 17 years 
ago when we had the last government shutdown, led at that time by the 
Republican majority in the House of Representatives. I had thought they 
learned the consequences to the Nation and to their party as a result 
of such a shutdown. But it seems those memories have faded.
  Now we are on the verge of a consequence that is consequential to the 
lives of American families, consequential to the economy of the 
country, consequential to the message we send across the globe.
  What I cannot understand is the fixation that our Republican 
colleagues have on the question of the Affordable Care Act, which they 
derisively call ObamaCare. It is something that was passed by the 
Congress, signed by the President, reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme 
Court, which is the final voice of what is the law of the land, and 
then reaffirmed by the American people in their reelection of the 
President with a significant majority.
  There were two candidates in that election. One was President Obama, 
who said: I intend to fully implement the Affordable Care Act and 
create millions of opportunities for those who have no insurance--to 
control costs; to end preexisting conditions as a limitation; to 
ultimately ensure that children could stay on their parents' insurance 
to the age of 26; to be able to provide millions of dollars of relief 
across the landscape of the country; to help senior citizens who often 
chose between putting food on the table, keeping their home, or having 
access to

[[Page S7053]]

lifesaving, life-enhancing drugs, by getting a doughnut hole--that gap 
in coverage for seniors--to be ultimately eliminated. It has provided 
tremendous relief for the seniors in our country not to have to make 
those dynamic choices.
  So what they could not achieve at the ballot box they are trying to 
achieve by shutting down the Federal Government.
  And then, at this late hour, after having tried a series of times to 
undermine the Affordable Care Act--and believe me, when they talk about 
a 1-year delay, which they seem to try to show that it is benign, it is 
not benign. There is a purpose to their strategy. The reason that a 1-
year delay--in addition to the fact that the law should be able to move 
forward for millions who have no insurance to be able to finally have 
insurance--is because if you delay the mandate, that means 11 million 
people will go uninsured who otherwise would get coverage. It means, as 
the Congressional Budget Office estimated--the nonpartisan entity of 
the Congress that scores everything we do: Is this going to cost money; 
is this going to save money--they estimated that repealing that 
individual mandate will increase premiums anywhere between 15 to 20 
percent because fewer healthy people will enroll to balance out those 
with higher medical needs. Insurance is about spreading the risk across 
the spectrum.
  In my home State of New Jersey, we tried to have insurance reform 
that limited preexisting condition exclusions and different premium 
band ratings without an individual requirement for coverage. The result 
was skyrocketing premiums. So, in essence, delaying the mandate for a 
year--which is the essence of what the House Republicans have sent here 
various times as a condition of keeping the government open--is a 
Trojan horse because Republicans know that, in doing such a delay, the 
mandate will create higher premiums. And in creating those higher 
premiums, they, in essence, create rate shock and they fulfill that 
which they would like to see, which is the failure of the Affordable 
Care Act.
  They have a very particular strategy. It is not benign by any stretch 
of the imagination. They are not concerned that the Affordable Care Act 
will fail. They are concerned it will actually succeed. So what they 
seek to do is to introduce poison pills to make it fail.
  It is amazing to me that I keep hearing: Well, we will replace it. 
With what? We have not heard with what. When we challenge our 
colleagues, they say: Oh, yes, preexisting conditions, we are for that, 
making sure that does not exist anymore. We are for the seniors getting 
the rebates on prescription drugs. We are for making sure there are no 
more lifetime caps on anybody's insurance, so if they have a 
catastrophic illness, they will not come up against that cap. We are 
for all of those things. The only problem is, to have all of those 
benefits which Americans overwhelmingly want, it costs money. And the 
only way to do that is, of course, to have everybody ultimately insured 
in the country.
  This is not a fight between Democrats and Republicans. This is a 
battle for the very soul of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, they 
are playing it out in a way that affects the Nation. This is a designed 
strategy.
  Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote a tremendous piece. I 
recommend it to all of my colleagues. He basically described a meeting 
that took place in January of this year. I am going to read from his 
article for a moment: ``In January, demoralized House Republicans 
retreated to Williamsburg, Virginia, to plot out their legislative 
strategy for President Obama's second term. Conservatives were angry 
that their leaders had been unable to stop a whole series of things, 
including the Bush tax cuts on high incomes, and they wanted to make 
sure their leaders would no longer have any further compromises. Not 
only did they decide they would not have any further compromises, but, 
in fact, they developed a legislative strategy.
  Before I go into that, I am happy to yield to the majority leader who 
I understand has an announcement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, through you to my dear friend from New 
Jersey, who does such a wonderful job in everything he does, especially 
running the Foreign Relations Committee, I thank him for yielding to 
me.
  This is a very sad day for our country. The President has told the 
head of the Office of Management and Budget, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to 
issue a shutdown statement, and she has done that. Here it is: 
``MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.''

       This memorandum follows the September 17 memo and provides 
     an update on the potential lapse of appropriations.

  No more potential. It is after midnight.

       Appropriations provided under the Consolidated and Further 
     Continuing Appropriations Act expire at 11:59 pm tonight. 
     Unfortunately, we do not have a clear indication that 
     Congress will act in time for the President to sign the 
     continuing resolution before the end of the day tomorrow, 
     October, 2013. Therefore, agencies should now execute plans 
     for shutdown due to the absence of appropriations.

  That is what she said. So the agencies of government are in the 
process of closing down. It now appears that the House is not going to 
do anything to keep the government from shutting down. They have some 
jerry-rigged thing about going to conference. It is embarrassing that 
these people who are elected to represent the country are representing 
the tea party, the anarchists of the country, and a majority of the 
Republicans in the House are following every step of the way.
  This is an unnecessary blow to America, to the economy, the middle 
class, everyone. The House has within their power the ability to avoid 
a shutdown. They should simply pass the 6-week CR we sent them.
  We are going to come in in the morning and see what they have done 
sometime tonight. But I would hope they would understand that, within 
their power, at any time, all they have to do is accept what we already 
passed. All this stuff they keep sending over here--they are so fixated 
on embarrassing our President, the President of the United States. They 
think an election is coming this November. It happened last November. 
He was elected by 5 million votes over what Romney got--5 million 
votes. It was not close. So it is really too bad.
  I am going to ask this unanimous consent. We are going to go out 
tonight and come back at 9:30 in the morning. So the unanimous consent 
is that we are going to recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning. I want the 
Senators who are here on the floor to be able to talk for 5 minutes 
each.

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