[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 135 (Thursday, October 3, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7154-S7159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--H.J. RES. 72
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the
Senate receives H.J. Res. 72, making continuing appropriations for
veterans' benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three
times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and
laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. MURPHY. Reserving the right to object, Madam President, my
understanding is that the Senator is proposing to allow for
appropriations to move forward for a portion of veterans funding. Let
me just say a few things. It is clearly a hardship that the shutdown is
going to result in a diminution of benefits to our veterans. I
appreciate the Senator coming to the floor to try to address that
today.
But as my colleague from Connecticut just mentioned, it is also an
unacceptable hardship that there is about to be 4,000 workers at
Sikorsky Aircraft who are going to be furloughed on Friday because of
this shutdown. It is also an unacceptable hardship that thousands of
Head Start children are going to show up to their preschool being
closed. It is an unacceptable hardship to millions of frail elderly who
are going to have their nutritional benefits compromised.
So I think we can all agree that the consequences of the shutdown are
unacceptable to our veterans. They are unacceptable, though, to a
panoply of other families and individuals across the country.
I would note also that I believe the resolution the Senator is
offering and suggested be passed provides only partial funding for the
VA. There is no funding here to operate the national cemeteries. There
is no funding for the Board of Veterans' Appeals. There is no funding
for constructing VA hospitals and their clinics. There is no funding,
actually, to operate the IT system that the entire VA needs in order to
continue going forward.
So I would actually offer and ask unanimous consent that the
Senator's request be modified; that an amendment which is at the desk
be agreed to, that the joint resolution, as amended, then be read a
third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made
and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
This amendment is the text that passed the Senate. It is a clean
continuing resolution for the entire government and something that is
already over in the House and reportedly has the majority support of
the Members of the House of Representatives. This would solve the
problems I am sure the Senator is going to talk about with respect to
certain veterans but would also solve all of those other problems and
would make sure we continue to have funding for the national
cemeteries, continue to build hospitals that need to be built for
veterans, continue to service the IT needs that underlay the foundation
of our veterans systems, and also make sure Head Start kids do not get
turned away from their classrooms, make sure Sikorsky Aircraft workers
get to go back to work, make sure our food still gets inspected, we get
meals to our frail elderly.
The CR is in front of the Senate. If the Senator would agree, I
propose we move forward with this modification to his request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from Utah so modify his
request?
Mr. LEE. I object to the proposed modification.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the original request?
Mrs. BOXER. Reserving the right to object, I just want to say I so
strongly support my colleague from Connecticut. I so oppose what is
going on here with the Republicans. Time and time again they have had a
chance to
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open this government, and they say no. We have the votes in the House.
The Senate passed it. We sent it over there. Let's make sure we do what
is right for the people. That means opening this government. We show up
to work. We have two things to do to earn our pay; one is keep the
government open. Just because people are going to get health insurance
and it bothers some Republicans, sorry you lost that battle 3\1/2\
years ago and then in the election.
So we have to keep the government running, and we have to pay the
bills that we all incurred. They are threatening chaos. I am so
appreciative the Senator from Connecticut came down and gave another
chance to our Republican friends to let them join us and do our job.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. MURPHY. Again, the Senator having rejected my offer to modify his
consent--we have an opportunity to pass a continuing resolution which
enjoys the support of the Senate, which reportedly enjoys the support
of the majority of Members of the House of Representatives should the
Speaker simply call it. We could solve the problems the Senator is
about to talk about, as well as all of the other problems presented to
the people being affected today by the shutdown, if we would just move
forward with a clean continuing resolution with no political riders
attached to it.
For that reason, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, what we are being told by the majority is
that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. Moments
ago, I proposed a unanimous consent request that if approved would
provide for the immediate availability of mandatory funds generally
controlled through the annual appropriations process for the Department
of Veterans Affairs.
I thank the Republican leader for making similar requests earlier
today and other Republican colleagues for joining him. I look forward
to making other similar requests in the coming hours. Frankly, I am a
little stunned at some of the things we are hearing from the other side
of the aisle. It is difficult for me to understand the objection to
bills the House passed last night and the ones Senate Republicans are
trying to pass today.
First, this legislation does not fund anything that is controversial.
None of the pieces of legislation being worked on and passed by the
House right now and last night can be considered controversial. These
bills provide funding for things such as veterans' disability benefits,
the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks
open and they make sure our National Guard personnel get paid.
There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats do not
agree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be among
those things. Second, the President himself has asked Congress to do
this. I remind my friends exactly what he said a few days ago, speaking
to what might happen during a government shutdown.
He said:
Office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed.
Vital services for seniors and veterans, women and children,
businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung . . .
Veterans who've sacrificed for their country, will find their
support centers unstaffed . . . Tourists will find every one
of America's national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to
the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed.
And of course the communities and small businesses that rely
on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out
of customers and out of luck.
The Republicans in the House of Representatives took the President of
the United States at his word and started acting immediately to draft
bills that would make sure these priorities received funding. In
response, Senate Democrats have said this plan to fund things such as
veterans, national parks, and others was fundamentally unserious. They
said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them
all, the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very
things he said he wanted to fund, that he would like Congress to fund.
It makes me wonder, why is it that the President of the United States
and the Democrats in the Senate are having such a hard time taking yes
for an answer. The fundamental objection, as I understand it, has been
that because these bills, passed by the House of Representatives last
night, and those being passed today, within the next couple of hours,
because those bills do not fund everything, they are objectionable; in
other words, we have to fund everything or we may fund nothing.
I have to remind my colleagues that normally, under regular order,
Congress will vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate
segmented appropriations measures, making sure we address each year
within our Federal Government what it is that we are spending money on.
This is a big government, one that expends between $3.5 and $4 trillion
a year. It is appropriate that we break this up into pieces.
But over the last 4\1/2\ years or so, we have been operating on the
basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically
require us to fund everything or fund nothing. So what this proposal
does, what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite
wisely doing is saying let's start with those areas as to which there
is the most broad-based bipartisan consensus, and let's keep government
funded at current levels, as the continuing resolution would do within
those areas, and let's build consensus and let's start funding the
government in those areas where there is not significant objection.
What I do not hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to
what it does fund. What I hear is they are objecting to what it does
not fund. So let's pass those things we can agree should be funded, and
let's move forward. I think we can get most of this resolved fairly
quickly.
Two of the bills in the House of Representatives that have been
passed in this fashion have, quite significantly, received substantial
bipartisan support. I expect that the rest of them will receive
bipartisan support as well. In the middle of an unfortunate government
shutdown, surrounded by all of this diverse rhetoric, Republicans and
Democrats came together in the House, overwhelmingly, to approve these
bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in
the Senate, acting upon the advice of our better angels and acting in
the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to keep our government funded.
Fourth, this is a path forward that was first introduced by none
other than the distinguished majority leader himself. On Monday
afternoon, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, the Senate majority leader,
asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured our Active-Duty
military would be paid in the event of a shutdown. In a matter of
minutes it was done.
So I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games?
Was that unserious? We did that then. Monday, just a few days ago, we
passed something that did not fund everything, but it did fund
something. It funded the government to the extent necessary to allow us
to continue paying our Active-Duty military personnel.
Was that unserious? Well, of course not. Why is it unserious when we
try to fund veterans' disability payments, cancer research, or our
National Guard?
Why is it all of a sudden trying to play games trying to keep our
national parks open?
What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to
pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans' benefits?
Finally, none of these bills has any connection to the implementation
of ObamaCare.
I understand that my friends across the aisle support that law
despite its numerous failings and indications that it is harming the
American people and the economy, that it is hurting jobs and
threatening the affordability of health insurance.
I understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect
that law.
We are going to continue to have that debate about that law,
especially in light of all of the problems people are having signing up
with the exchanges, not to mention the ongoing problems of job losses,
wage reductions, hours lost, and people losing their health coverage
because of ObamaCare. Especially in light of all of those problems, we
should continue
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having that debate, but that debate isn't essential to every aspect of
our government's funding.
Let me be clear. We will do everything in our power to protect the
American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. That fight will
most certainly continue.
My friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as I am
sure they will. But none of these bills, none of the bills that we are
considering today relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare.
For this moment, at the very least, we should focus on keeping our
promise to the people, those who have sacrificed the most to keep this
country free.
I applaud the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.
I applaud the Republicans and the Democrats who have supported
legislation to help keep our government funded in these critical areas.
We can come together if we act in a step-by-step process, if we pursue
a step-by-step process for funding our government.
It more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating
in the first place. This is the best way forward. It is the way to help
minimize the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of this
unfortunate shutdown.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to talk about the need to reopen
government--and not to reopen government in a piecemeal way, one bit
this week and then another bit next week, which seems to be the newest
gambit on the table. We need to reopen the government because the
government of this country should have never shut down in the first
place.
Few States are feeling the impact of the shutdown more than Virginia.
I wish to tell two stories, a personal one and then a story about one
community in my State.
In my State many Federal employees live in Virginia. About 150,000
Federal employees are jeopardized currently by the shutdown, and 70,000
of them are DOD civilians who were already furloughed earlier this
year. One of the employees who is jeopardized is a major in the Air
Force Reserve by the name of Eric Ryan. He lives in northern Virginia,
is married, and has four children.
Eric had a distinguished career in the Air Force, retired, became a
civilian, rejoined the Air Force Reserve, and is currently working at
the Pentagon. At the Pentagon as a civilian, he is currently furloughed
with a wife and four children to support.
Eric is a Presidential Management Fellow and has been loaned to my
office for a period of time. He showed up at the Pentagon Tuesday to
get furloughed, and then he came to my office to hear me deliver my
furlough speech to all of my employees. He got the double dose that
day.
This afternoon I have the honor of going and participating in the
promotion ceremony for Eric Ryan from major to lieutenant colonel. I am
going to talk about him and his qualifications, but it is going to be a
bitter moment for all of us as I engage in that promotion for this
wonderful person. He first served this Nation by flying dozens of
missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves the Nation in a new
way, but has now been furloughed twice this year, once because of the
sequester and next because of the shutdown. We have tens of thousands
of veterans such as Eric Ryan who are going through the furlough
experience.
The second is a community story. If you were to ask where in Virginia
would you feel the impact of the sequester, I think most people might
think the neighborhoods around the Pentagon or Hampton Roads, where
there is naval power. But the effects are being felt everywhere.
I wish to speak about one community, Chincoteague, the barrier island
off the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the subject of the famous children's
book, ``Misty of Chincoteague.'' It is beautiful community, a tiny
small town.
Chincoteague's economy is fundamentally about visits to the national
seashore, Assateague and Chincoteague Islands. But those parks and
national resources have been closed.
I got a call Tuesday morning right away from friends in Chincoteague
saying: Chincoteague is motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas
stations, and people who sell suntan lotion and sunglasses. Because of
the closure, the entire economy has had its guts pulled out during the
Federal shutdown.
Moreover, there is a historic lighthouse at the wildlife refuge that
has been restored. It has taken 6 years to restore. This week was the
opening and celebration of the lighthouse. They expected visitors to
come from everywhere. That has been cancelled.
Chincoteague has one other industry that is very important. They
didn't only want to be about tourism, so over the last 15 to 20 years
they have worked to build up the capacity of NASA at Wallops Island,
which is 5 miles from Chincoteague Island.
Kids who graduate from high school and are interested in science and
math don't have to move away and never come home. They can get a
science and math degree, come back, and work as rocket scientists.
Eighty percent of the NASA employees at Wallops near Chincoteague have
been furloughed as a result of this shutdown.
The experience of Col. Eric Ryan, who works in my office, and the
experience of this small community on the Eastern Shore of Virginia
demonstrates how serious these effects are.
The good news is we can solve this if Speaker Boehner would only
allow a vote to reopen government.
The Presiding Officer knows this because we sat through it together.
It bears a little bit of repetition.
The Senate passed a budget on March 23 that funds all of these issues
at the level that the Senate thinks is right. The same week the House
passed a budget funding government at levels they think is right.
Under the Budget Control Act of 1974, the right strategy at that
point was to put the two budgets in conference and let conferees figure
it out. For folks who aren't familiar with it--and there may be some
who are listening--a budget conference is a pretty simple thing.
When I was Governor of Virginia, we had them all the time. The two
Houses would pass different budgets. Each House takes their budget,
goes into the negotiating room, sits down, and compares. One side wins
on this issue, one side wins on the other, and on a third issue they
might split it 50-50. The House budget and the Senate budget are very
different.
But that is what we do. We sit down, listen, dialogue, compromise,
and we solve the problems of the country. Nineteen times since March 23
we have stood on the floor of this body and said we want to go to
conference with the House on this budget. Nineteen times, the last of
which was yesterday, a small handful of Senators--and that was the
phrase that the Senator from Utah used once on the floor in blocking
this: We are a small handful of Senators--and the House Republicans
have blocked a budget compromise.
For the last 6\1/2\ months we have not had the opportunity to sit
down and dialogue. For folks who don't know how a budget conference
works, if, in a conference a compromise is reached, it doesn't just
become law like that. The compromise has to come back to both Houses.
Both Houses debate the compromise, both Houses vote on the compromise,
and everyone's interests are protected. They can look at the compromise
and decide whether they like it or don't.
For 6\1/2\ months we have been blocked in an effort to go to budget
conference. Imagine our amazement. In this body on Monday night, after
the House shut down government, 3 hours later they passed a bill and
said: We have an idea. Let's have a conference. Finally, 6\1/2\ months
after they shut down government. But let's have it be a really
particular kind of conference, not a conference about the budget of the
United States. Let's have a conference about whether the Government of
the United States should be open or closed.
I know I can speak for my colleagues who are here. Our view is we
will negotiate, compromise, and listen to any policy issue. Budget
negotiation is exactly how you do this or policy debates are how you do
it. But what none of us in this body or in the House should ever
negotiate is whether the United States exists or not, whether it is
funded or not, whether it is open or closed.
I believe it has to be open. That is essentially what our oath of
office says we have to do when we say we will
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faithfully discharge all the duties of the office to which we have been
elected.
We also won't negotiate whether the United States should pay its
bills because the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in Section 5 makes
very plain that the public debt of the United States and its validity
shall not be questioned.
There is a way forward here, and it is such a simple way forward:
that is, Speaker Boehner needs to allow a vote in the House. It is
simple. Allow a vote and not only allow a vote, but allow a vote on a
budget number that he has already agreed to.
The continuing resolution the Senator from Connecticut talked about
that is currently pending, funds government for an interim period of
time at a budget level that was the House's number. It is not a number
I liked. We had a different number in the Senate, a higher number we
want to fund it to. But we accepted the House's number for the short-
term spending bill out of a spirit of compromise.
We sent it back to the House and we said: We are compromising. We are
not even going 50-50. We are compromising by accepting your budget
number. This is not as if the Senator from Utah said we want to fund
everything or nothing, no. We have other things we would like to fund
that we are not funding in this bill because we accepted everything the
House wants to fund in their CR.
They only need to accept yes for an answer. The good news is this is
not a partisan issue because many Senate Republicans want to do exactly
what I am suggesting.
Based on current reports in the House, there are numerous House
Republicans--four of whom are from Virginia--who are publicly on the
record. They wish to do exactly as we are suggesting.
Speaker Boehner, bring your own spending bill up for a vote. If you
do it will pass. If it passes, government will reopen. Once government
has reopened, we can have a budget conference and talk about any issue
the House wants to talk about, any issue that we want to talk about.
But it is time to end hostage politics and reopen the doors.
The Speaker has it in his hands to do that, simply and immediately.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. TESTER. Madam President, people all around this country--and
Montana is no exception--are looking at the actions in Washington, DC,
and they are shaking their heads in disbelief. They are shaking their
heads in disbelief because the government has shut down, but yet a bill
has passed the Senate. If the Speaker of the House would offer it on
the House floor, it would pass the House and the government wouldn't
have to be shut down.
Then all the resolutions put forth on the other side, and some on
this side, quite frankly, about opening different areas of the
government, would all be settled because government would be open.
A previous speaker this morning said: We shouldn't be dealing with
overall government. We should be dealing with this in piecemeal
fashion.
Really? Who determines who gets help and who determines who doesn't?
The fact is the government provides some pretty essential services to
folks across the board. To stand on this floor and cherry-pick certain
pieces of the government to fund and not to fund is totally unfair.
Quite frankly, those groups know they are being used as political pawns
in this process.
We started out these negotiations with a CR that was at $1.58
trillion. We compromised that down to a point of $986 billion,
somewhere around a $70 billion reduction. This is real money, a
significant compromise.
The House came back and said: No, that is really not good enough. We
want that $986 billion figure, and then we also want to defund the
Affordable Care Act.
Why? Because, my goodness, it is the most terrible thing. There are
all sorts of reasons given on the floor why the Affordable Care Act is
so terrible.
For example, I had a flat tire on my truck last week--it was the
Affordable Care Act. I ran out of fuel in my fuel tank--that doggone
Affordable Care Act.
Let's get the Affordable Care Act implemented and all of these bogus
excuses about why it is so bad will go away. People will get the
advantage of affordable insurance once again, not government health
care, but affordable insurance so they can afford to get sick.
Aside from that, the repeal of it was turned back. Then they came
back with a delay of 1 year and said: Oh, by the way, if you work for
Congress or you are a Member of Congress, we are going to take away any
sort of insurance benefits you get whatsoever.
This was interesting. Because, quite frankly, if Members of Congress
don't want that benefit, they will turn it back, and I anticipate some
will after the Affordable Care Act is put into place. I doubt that very
much.
Instead, what happened was we turned that back, and now we are in a
situation where we sent back a clean continuing resolution at $986
billion. In the House, if the Speaker would put that bill on the floor,
it would pass and we could start doing the business of this country
once again rather than sitting here in a government shutdown where
things aren't working and we are not addressing the issues that need to
be addressed.
But when we take a look at whether we are going to fund certain
programs, I want to talk about a few very briefly before I kick it over
to the Senator from Colorado.
We have intelligence folks who are not on the ground, but we have
folks fighting in theater right now who need that intelligence. Whether
they get it is up in the air. The folks who protect our clean water and
air are off the job. Clean water is our most important resource, and
they are not there to make sure it remains clean. Kids on Head Start,
food inspectors, research into energy so we can have a 21st-century
economy and affordable energy in that 21st century--they are all off
the job. Domestic violence and folks who are impacted by domestic
violence--there are shelters that are determining right now whether
they will turn away those victims of domestic violence.
The list goes on and on and on. Whether we are talking about the
Centers for Disease Control or we are talking about logging and salvage
sales or talking about allowing wells to be drilled in the Bakken--that
has all stopped. Why? Because of a Speaker of the House--who, by the
way, a previous speaker just said they were very proud of. But why has
it stopped? It is because of a Speaker of the House who doesn't have
the internal guts to put this on the floor and let it pass the House of
Representatives. That would put this country back to work so we could
start doing the things we need to do in the halls of the Senate and the
halls of the House that are important for this country, whether it is
the farm bill or housing reform or a defense authorization bill--the
list goes on and on. Instead, we are dealing with a totally self-
inflicted crisis supported by people who want to shut this government
down. Regardless of what they say on this floor, they are very happy
because this government is shut down.
It is time, Members of the House of Representatives, that you demand
that the Speaker put that bill up so you can vote on it and we can get
back to doing the business of this country.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I would like to first say how much I
appreciate the words of the Senator from Virginia and the words of the
Senator from Montana. They are known to be commonsense people, to work
in a bipartisan way day after day in this Congress, against all odds,
to actually try to make something work around this place. So I thank
them for their leadership and their comments this morning.
For 4 years I have come to this floor at about this time of the year
and talked about how Washington has become the land of flickering
lights where the standard of success is not how we are imagining the
future and what we are doing for the next generation of Americans but
that we are managing, after a little bit of aggravation and hostility,
to keep the lights on for 1 more month or for 6 more months. Well, this
time we are not the land of flickering lights. The lights are out in
Washington. They have managed to shut down the government.
No mayor, no school superintendent, no city council in Colorado would
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threaten the shutdown of their government over politics. Whether they
are a Democratic mayor or a Republican mayor or a tea party mayor, we
wouldn't stand for it in Colorado. They certainly would never threaten
the credit rating of their community over politics. In fact, it is
exactly the opposite. We just had these terrible floods in our State,
and people are struggling to do everything they can to keep their
governments open to provide people who have been displaced by the
flood, who have lost everything they own, the services they need.
This shutdown is already hurting the U.S. economy and Colorado's
economy, and it is not surprising why. There is a lot of rhetoric
around this place about uncertainty and the damage it does to our
economy. Nothing could create more uncertainty than shutting this
government down and threatening the credit rating of the United States
by saying: We are not going to pay our bills. We have an ideology that
is so far outside the mainstream of American political thought that we
can't find a way to actually win elections that align with our
ideology, so we are going to use these kinds of tactics to bring this
government to its knees.
The AP reported that the U.S. and European stock markets fell
yesterday as investors and world leaders worried about the threat to
the global economy. According to the Denver Post, the shutdown may cost
the United States at least $300 million a day in lost output during a
1-week shutdown. What good is that doing anybody? How is that helping
any American? Economists have estimated that a 3-week closing would cut
economic production by 1 percent. It would cut our GDP by 1 percent.
How does this self-inflicted wound help anybody?
In Colorado, to be clear, just as in the other States we have heard
about today, it is not just the families who rely on Federal programs
or Federal workers who are suffering because of this shutdown. The
Denver Post reported that in a neighborhood near the Denver Federal
Center, Rick Koerner, who owns Stack Subs sandwich shop in Lakewood,
estimates he has lost about 5 percent of his normal business since the
shutdown began on Thursday. He says he can't afford to lose any
customers because, in his words, ``it's a thin-margin business to begin
with.'' How are we helping him? In the same story, Deborah Giovingo,
who owns a restaurant called Paradise Cove on West Alameda Avenue, just
east of the Federal Center, said she is also witnessing a loss. ``We're
not getting our regular lunchers. I think they're really trying to
conserve their money.'' Right now, how are we helping these people?
One city perhaps hardest hit in our State is Colorado Springs in El
Paso County. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the furloughs
at our military bases include more than 1,000 workers at the Air Force
Academy, 400 workers at Schriever Air Force Base, 2,200 at Peterson Air
Force Base, and 700 at U.S. Northern Command. At Fort Carson another
1,000 workers are off the job. Is our job more important than their
job? Is the job they do to protect this country, to defend this
country, less important than the job of these elected representatives
in Washington who are still taking a salary? I don't think so. Are
these jobs less important than the people who are actually in theater
right now in Afghanistan? I don't think so.
After 1 week of shutdown, the WIC Program--the Women, Infants, and
Children Program--will have no funds for clinical services, food
benefits, and administrative costs. Roughly 100,000 women and children
in Colorado participated in the WIC Program last year and will lose
their benefits.
The shutdown will delay SBA loans for Colorado's small businesses.
Last year SBA processed 1,300 applications, for a total of $559 million
in loans, and they are on the ground right now, thank goodness, working
with people who have suffered through these floods.
Our national parks, wildlife refuges, and recreational lands--major
drivers of Colorado's economy--are closed. They are shut down.
Approximately 13,000 people visiting national parks in Colorado will be
turned away each day this government is closed. It will result in
nearly $800,000 of revenue a day for our local communities, which are
already suffering because of the floods. Estes Park is one of the towns
that have been terribly affected, and this is one of their peak times
of the year for tourism because of the changing leaves. They are losing
that opportunity, and we are making it worse because the government is
shut down.
Thousands of Federal employees are out of work during this economic
recovery. There is a delay in Social Security services. There will be a
delay in veterans' benefits by the end of October. Colorado is home to
almost 400,000 veterans. That is almost 10 percent of our State's
population.
At risk is the funding for Head Start agencies and the Export-Import
Bank's support for small companies.
But what is just so insulting at this moment is that we are trying to
recover from this flood. The recent flooding damaged at least 17,000
homes and other structures, several thousand of which were outright
destroyed. Millions of dollars' worth of public infrastructure has
literally been swept away. More than 200 miles of Colorado roads and at
least 50 bridges have been damaged or destroyed. Nine Coloradans lost
their lives in the floods. The floods consumed an area of Colorado that
is twice the size of Rhode Island. The devastation defies belief.
Houses have been leveled and reduced to piles of debris, and some of
these communities lie in ruins.
FEMA has pledged to go to great lengths, and they are working very
hard to ensure that crucial disaster response and recovery services are
not interrupted. To be clear, so far, emergency funds are still flowing
and emergency workers are still in place. They are doing a phenomenal
job, and I want to say on this floor, on behalf of everybody in
Colorado, how grateful we are for their work. FEMA is going to make
sure this work gets done, but nevertheless a number of FEMA employees--
both based in Washington and at the FEMA Region VIII office
headquartered in Denver--are vulnerable to furloughs if this shutdown
continues.
Our economy is recovering in Colorado, and we are being led by
innovative businesses that have been growing jobs despite the
dysfunction in Washington. This year I visited many of them--companies
that, in the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression,
were actually creating jobs by inventing our future. That is what
innovators do, and that is what Coloradans do. We are letting them down
profoundly here by failing to exercise our most basic responsibilities
as legislators, as people who receive a salary from the taxpayer. They
do not send us here to shut it down, they send us here to improve it.
They send us here to come to agreement and to compromise and to imagine
a better future for our children and for our grandchildren. That is
what we are here to do.
Instead, a very radical faction in the House and some of their
colleagues here in the Senate have shut this government down in support
of an ideology that, as I mentioned earlier, is far outside the
mainstream of American political thought. They are entitled to their
opinion. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But they are not
entitled to shut the government down if they don't get what they want,
and that is where we find ourselves.
It has been a privilege for me to work in this place, and the moments
I have enjoyed the most have been the ones where we have worked in a
bipartisan way, with colleagues on the other side, to dramatically
improve the way the Food and Drug Administration works so that new
drugs could be approved more quickly and so that the 600 bioscience
firms in Colorado that came to me and said they could no longer raise
venture capital because it was all going to Europe and Asia because of
uncertainty with the FDA and to please help them fix that--with
Republican colleagues, we were able to get that done.
In working the immigration bill we passed, with the Gang of 8--four
Democrats and four Republicans--we solved each other's political
problems to bring a product to the floor that actually could pass with
nearly 70 votes--a supermajority of the Senate--and we still need to
pass that bill in the House.
That bill, in stark contrast to the government shutdown we are going
through right now, actually will drive GDP growth. The Congressional
Budget Office tells us that immigration bill adds 3 points of GDP
growth in the first 10 years and 5 points in the second 10 years.
[[Page S7159]]
By the way, at a moment when these people are saying they are
shutting the government down, mostly because of the health care bill
but also because of their concern about a growing government and
widening deficits, the immigration bill reduces the deficit by $900
billion over a 20-year period. That is real money even in Washington,
DC. They could be passing that bill over there. Instead, the government
is shut down, and it has been a catastrophic failure of leadership that
has brought us to this place.
I have absolutely no doubt, from all the press reports I have read
and what I hear from my Republican colleagues in the Senate, my friends
in the Senate who are Republicans, that if Speaker Boehner put on the
floor of the House the Senate version of the so-called continuing
resolution, it would pass with a broad majority of Democrats and
Republicans, and the American people would cheer because that is what
they want. They want us working together. And the standard of success
needs to be something greater than that we kept the lights on, which in
this instance we haven't. We haven't even done that. What is the signal
we are trying to send to this complicated world in which we live by
shutting this government down? Why is it that people here get away with
things that no local elected official would ever get away with?
So we have to continue to fight to get this government open. We are
going to have another fight to make sure that, for the first time in
the United States, we don't fail to pay our bills and blow up the full
faith and credit of the United States--which is one of our most
important assets, right up there with the rule of law, right up there
with our capitalist economy. From our founding, the full faith and
credit of the United States has been a bulwark for us.
But once we get past that, what we need to fight for is the next
generation of Americans. That is why we have been sent here. Whether we
are Democrats or Republicans, that is why we are here. And they are
waiting to see whether we are willing to be the first generation of
American leadership to provide less opportunity--not more--to the
people that are coming after us.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Connecticut.
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