[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 141 (Thursday, October 10, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7357-S7371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEFAULT PREVENTION ACT OF 2013--MOTION TO PROCEED
Mr. REID. I move to proceed to Calendar No. 211, S. 1569, the debt
limit bill.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 211, S. 1569, a bill to
ensure the complete and timely payment of the obligations of
the United States Government until December 31, 2014.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Schedule
Mr. REID. Following leader remarks the time until 1 p.m. will be
equally divided and controlled between the two leaders and their
designees.
At 1 p.m. the Senate will recess subject to the call of the Chair for
a special caucus meeting with the President.
Measures Placed on the Calendar--H.J. Res. 84, H.J. Res. 89, H.J. Res.
90, H.J. Res. 91
Mr. REID. There are four measures at the desk due for a second
reading.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will read the measures by
title for a second time.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 84) making continuing
appropriations for Head Start for fiscal year 2014, and for
other purposes.
A joint resolution (H.J. Res 89) making appropriations for
the salaries and related expenses of certain Federal
employees during a lapse in funding authority for fiscal year
2014, to establish a bicameral working group on deficit
reduction and economic growth, and for other purposes.
A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 90) making continuing
appropriations for the Federal Aviation Administration for
fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.
A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 91) making continuing
appropriations for the death gratuities and related survivor
benefits for survivors of deceased military servicemembers of
the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2014, and for other
purposes.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I would object to any further proceedings
with respect to these measures en bloc.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The measures will be placed on the calendar.
Mr. REID. The President issued a warning to Congress:
The full consequences of a default by the United States--or
even the prospect of a default by the United States--are
impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration
of the full faith and credit of the United States would have
substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the
value of the dollar in exchange markets.
The President went on to warn of ``risks, the costs, the disruptions,
and the incalculable damage'' of failing to avert such a default.
This is not Barack Obama; this was Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Four years later in 1987, Reagan again warned Congress about the
impacts of a default on the economy. He said:
This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds
and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits.
Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in
the financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar.
Yet three decades later, an alarming number of Republicans have
denied or downplayed the seriousness of a first-ever default on the
full faith and credit of the United States.
To these default deniers, east is west, north is south, black is
white, and right is wrong.
[[Page S7358]]
Let's talk about what raising the debt actually means. It simply
means we are going to pay our bills. It is not a vote to spend more
money to authorize new programs or to buy new things. It is a vote to
pay the bills.
The Federal Government has already incurred these bills, bills for
roads and bridges--we have already built them--the warships we have
already commissioned, wars that have been waged and tax breaks that
have been charged on a national credit card.
A vote to avert default is a vote to pay the bills for all these and
more.
Many Republicans are in the press today, and have been for the past
week or 10 days, arguing, Why worry about it? It will all work out.
These same Republicans who argue that we should default on the
Nation's bills voted time and time again to spend borrowed money, and a
lot of it, without any regard for the long-term effect it would have.
These Republicans voted to sell government bonds to China, Saudi
Arabia, and Japan to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Republican Senators have come to this floor and lamented raising the
debt. We have to raise this debt because of two unpaid wars costing
trillions of dollars; tax breaks for the wealthy costing trillions of
dollars, all given to the rich with borrowed money; wars fought with
borrowed money.
During the Bush administration, these same Republicans were happy to
run up America's credit cards to the tune of trillions of dollars.
Their theory was lower the taxes; it will be great for the economy.
They are now howling about the debts they created, the debts they voted
for. Never mind that with little help from Republicans in Congress,
President Barack Obama has reduced the ratio of deficit to gross
domestic product from 9 percent to 4 percent. This is very good, in
spite of the debt he has been trying to get charge of; it wasn't his.
Now that the bill for the Republicans' excesses has come due, the
bills for wars they supported and the tax cuts they have received, they
are not willing to pay them. They want to walk out on that check.
Many of these same Republicans also say we can avoid default by
prioritizing whom to pay and when we pay them. They say we should pay
foreign debtholders first. They all agree with that. China would be
first, then Saudi Arabia, and maybe Japan.
We shouldn't and couldn't pay Social Security recipients under that
scenario, veterans or Medicare. No matter how much we would want to, we
couldn't do it. There would be no money to do it. In addition to having
shockingly skewed priorities, Republicans are also using very flawed
logic.
Here is a real-world example. Let us say the Presiding Officer has a
mortgage, car payment, and a cell phone bill. The Presiding Officer has
to decide: Which one should I pay? I can't pay them all. Which one
should I pay?
It doesn't matter if the Presiding Officer picks one of them because
he has defaulted anyway. He can't pay his bills. He likely would never
be able to buy another car, cell phone, certainly not a house. His
credit would be ruined for the foreseeable future.
The same thing would happen to our country. One week from today--and
that is not a definite time, it could be a couple days before or a
couple of days after, but we are there; let's say a week from now and
use that as a point of reference--the United States has no money. It
can't borrow any money. The Federal Government paid China but failed to
pay Social Security recipients, unemployment benefits or the salaries
of our brave men and women fighting in uniform.
The damage not only to our credit rating, world credit rating, but
also to our global reputation would be profound and irreversible. The
risks, the costs, the disruptions and the damage would be incalculable.
This is what President Ronald Reagan said.
Why don't they listen to this man they say is such a great leader--
and was. I agree. He was a tremendous President. I didn't agree with
him all the time, but he was a real leader. He, more than anyone else,
is responsible for ending the Cold War. There are many who say he
couldn't fit in the Republican Party of today.
Robert Dole, who was the majority leader of the Senate from the State
of Kansas, a patriotic American, said himself he doesn't fit in the
Republican Party today.
The stakes couldn't be higher. A global economic recession, and
possibly even depression, face this great country. This is why
President Obama reached out to House Republicans, inviting them to the
White House yesterday afternoon for a serious discussion. Guess what
they said. We are too busy. We will send a few of us, but we are too
busy. Remember, the House is led by this same man who said he wanted to
have a conversation, but they are unwilling to have one with him.
I was disappointed to hear that the same intractable Republican
leaders who caused the current government shutdown were unwilling to
even allow their Members to meet with the President for a constructive
conversation. Again, they will send--I think they picked 17 out of the
232 they have. This great conversation is one they don't want.
They want to talk, but their actions tell another story. They have
caused enough economic turmoil with the reckless shutdown of the
Federal Government. If that is not enough, now we have the debt ceiling
coming in about 1 week. If Republicans force default on the Nation's
debt, it would be magnitudes worse than the damage they have already
caused our great country with this senselessly created government
shutdown.
Yesterday, Fidelity, the Nation's largest mutual fund manager, with
$500 billion in assets, announced it would sell all of its short-term
government bonds because of the threat of default. Today there will be
more.
Yesterday, government bonds were considered the safest investment in
the world. Will they be so tomorrow? Time will only tell. If the United
States fails to pay its bills, that safe haven will disappear very
quickly.
We are going to vote Saturday on the ability to proceed to a clean
debt ceiling. We will find out how Senate Republicans wish to proceed.
Economists say the consequences of not paying our bills, not extending
the debt ceiling, would be immediate and catastrophic. This isn't a
bunch of Harvard leftwingers.
Even Republican economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin said debt deniers are
dead wrong. He said a failure to raise the debt ceiling leads to very
bad economic outcomes and chaos in financial markets.
Fidelity's move is only the first sign of economic chaos and will
continue to spread the closer America comes to defaulting on its bills.
With every day that passes, it is more and more important for
Republicans to stop denying the reality of default and start working
with us to find common ground.
All we have said is open the government. Let us pay our bills. We
will negotiate with them on anything. We will have a conversation with
them about anything. Open the government. Let us pay our bills. Then we
will negotiate.
Recognition of Minority Leader
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.
The Debt Ceiling
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I would like to start this morning by
quoting something my good friend the majority leader said back in
2007--back when Congress was weighing whether to raise the debt
ceiling. Here is what the majority leader said back then:
Until we change the policies that led down this path, we
will be back year after year, digging the hole ever deeper.
And, of course, that is essentially what so many Americans are saying
today: If we are going to address the debt ceiling, then let's also
address the root causes of the debt. It just makes good sense.
One would think our friend the majority leader would continue to
agree with this logic as well, but that is not what he has been saying
lately. He is basically saying that it would be irresponsible for
Congress to address the most pressing problem we face in the country,
that it would be reckless to raise the debt ceiling if that also meant
doing something about the debt. In other words, he now seems to think
the best thing to do about our crushing Federal debt is to do nothing
at all. That is why my friend the majority leader introduced
legislation this week to now allow another $1 trillion to be added to
the debt with no strings attached at all, none, just a $1 trillion
[[Page S7359]]
debt ceiling increase: Just keep raising the credit card limit and
letting someone else deal with it later on.
We now have a debt close to $17 trillion--nearly double what it was
in 2007. We are borrowing nearly $2 billion a day--$2 billion a day--
and apparently our friends on the other side are fine with that. They
want us to give Washington a free pass to borrow and spend $1 trillion
more. He is so comfortable with all of this, my friend the majority
leader rejected the President's own proposal this week to do a short-
term increase followed by a negotiation on reforms.
Well, in my view, we were sent here to solve problems, not to defer
them. We were sent here to confront the challenges of the moment, not
ignore them. That is why the majority leader's proposal just won't fly,
because it is completely at odds with the wishes of most Americans. And
that is something the President and a lot of other Senate Democrats
agreed with when a Republican President was asking for a debt limit
increase. Of course, the problem is a lot more serious now than it was
back then.
Here is something else. Neither side wants to default on our debts.
Neither side will allow it. That is certainly the case, and people
should know that. It is irresponsible to do nothing about the debt, and
it is irresponsible to be stirring up anxiety about default, but that
doesn't mean the American people are wrong to ask that a debt limit
increase include reforms aimed at actually tackling the problems that
got us in this position in the first place, especially since what our
country has routinely done in the past is just that.
Going back to the Eisenhower administration, requests to raise the
debt ceiling have often been tied to important fiscal reforms--nearly
two dozen times going back to the Eisenhower administration. That is
how we got the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings reforms in the 1980s. That is how
we achieved balanced budgets in the 1990s. That is how we secured
significant spending reductions in President Obama's first term--
spending reductions on which he later campaigned.
Now President Obama seems to think Congress should just increase the
borrowing limit on his already maxed-out credit card without a single
negotiation. He seems to think the representatives of the American
people should just do what he says when he says it and because he says
it, no questions asked--no questions asked. You know, that is not just
irresponsible, it is not the way Presidents of both parties have dealt
with this problem in the past. Reagan negotiated, Clinton negotiated,
and if President Obama wants America to increase the credit limit, he
will negotiate too.
I would also like to address one of the President's favorite talking
points these days. He says he won't negotiate over ``the bills Congress
has already racked up.'' Look, if the President actually believed his
own talking point, he wouldn't threaten to veto virtually every
Republican attempt to get spending under control. We have tried
endlessly. The only times we can even get him to discuss sensible
budget reforms is when he is absolutely forced to--when Washington has
to deal with things like the debt ceiling. So let's drop the tired
talking points and just get about negotiating.
I know the President doesn't like the fact that Americans elected a
divided government, but they did. We have a divided government, and no
matter how much he tries to divide us, at the end of the day he is
going to have to deal with a Congress he doesn't entirely control.
The American people can be persuaded to raise the debt ceiling, but
they are not in any mood to simply hand over a blank check. They are
looking for sensible reforms. So if the President wants to increase his
credit limit, let's get to the table and negotiate. He has been
inviting Members of Congress to the White House this week. In fact, we
were told earlier today that Senate Republicans have been invited to
meet with the President tomorrow morning. That is a good start but only
if it means he has decided to drop his refusal to negotiate on
solutions. But if this is just a meeting where he simply reiterates
that he won't negotiate, then it certainly won't be very productive.
I yield the floor.
Reservation of Leader Time
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
leadership time is reserved.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time
until 1 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the two
leaders or their designees.
The assistant majority leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I received an email this morning from an
old friend. He is the father of a disabled veteran. This veteran is a
quadriplegic--a victim of a roadside bomb in Iraq. He has gone through
multiple surgeries. At some point most people would have given up on
him. In fact, they even talked about, at the age of 24, his being sent
to a nursing home for the rest of his life. His father said: No, we are
not going to let that happen to our son. He brought him to Chicago,
where he received extraordinary treatment at the Rehabilitation
Institute, and he started his slow, steady climb back to life. He is
home now. He is a father, married, has two small children, and his mom
and dad live with him to help out. The people in the community he lives
in--it is not in Illinois, it is in North Carolina--have been so
generous, building the perfect home for him and his wheelchair and
giving him as many opportunities as he could possibly enjoy in his
life.
This is a great story of a great family and a great American hero.
But his father wrote me an email today and said: We are worried. We are
worried about the November disability check. Senator, we need it. We
need that check.
I wrote back to him and I said: I will move Heaven and Earth and do
everything I can to make sure that payment is made.
And I believe it will be made. Somehow, it will be made. But I had to
tell him that we are facing an unnecessary crisis in America created by
politicians on Capitol Hill.
Shutting down the government of the United States of America? What
does that say about our Nation? What does it say about us in the Senate
and the House that we have reached this point, that we are deciding
today on the four or five bills that just passed the House? The House
has decided what little agency of government, what little spending
program they will approve each day--each day. It is estimated it will
take them almost 2\1/2\ months to fully fund the government at this
pace--2\1/2\ months of uncertainty as they decide day by day what
little program, what little agency they will reopen. Well, that is just
plain wrong, and every time they have offered that, we have said to
them: Open the government. It is essential.
There was a story 2 or 3 days ago about five American families who
were notified that they had lost their sons and daughters, who were
killed in Afghanistan. Traditionally, the U.S. Government comes through
quickly after that tragic information is shared with the family and
gives them a financial helping hand to arrange for them to come to
Dover, DE, for the arrival and return of their fallen hero. But because
of the government shutdown brought on by the Republicans, there was a
question as to whether we could even make that payment.
Luckily, a charity stepped forward--Fisher House. This is an
extraordinary charity that does so many great things for veterans who
are disabled and need help. They said: We are going to step in and help
these families until the government gets its act together, until the
politicians reopen the government.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced yesterday this new
development. Well, God bless the Fisher House charity, but it shouldn't
have been necessary. If we had done our job, it wouldn't be necessary;
the government would be open; this family whom I love, with this
disabled veteran, wouldn't be worried about that next check if we
simply did the responsible thing and opened the government.
Then there is a second issue which, although hard to believe, is even
larger in scope. The Republicans refuse to give us a chance to extend
the debt ceiling of America. What is the debt ceiling? This morning I
listened as the minority leader said it is raising the credit card
limit. No, it isn't. That is not an accurate statement. It is raising
the authority of our government to borrow money to pay for what we have
already spent. Many of the same politicians who voted for the spending
bills
[[Page S7360]]
now don't want to pay for them. They do not want to extend this debt
ceiling--the credit of the United States. That is totally
irresponsible. It is like ordering the biggest meal on the menu and
then refusing to pay when the bill comes. That is where they stand.
That is what they are arguing.
But it gets even worse. It will be the first time in the history of
the United States of America that we will have defaulted on our
national debt--the first time we have called into question the full
faith and credit of the United States of America. How serious is that?
Let me tell you how serious it is. Pick up the morning paper. ``World
leaders fear a default by U.S.'' in the Washington Post. I read it, and
it says:
That default scenario is bringing increasingly urgent pleas
from foreign leaders, some who describe their grave concern,
others who chide the United States about the risks of
political brinkmanship, beg its leaders to act responsibly
and wonder whether the world's superpower is showing some
cracks.
Now, are you ready for this? Do you know who was preaching to us
yesterday about responsibility in governing the United States of
America? Are you ready for this? This is a quote from Russian President
Vladimir Putin:
This is highly important for all of us. I am hopeful that
all the political forces in the United States will be able to
resolve this crisis as quickly as possible.
So now we are being preached to by President Putin about how to run a
country. Well, that is embarrassing, and it is totally unnecessary. The
failure to extend the debt limit of the United States is irresponsible
and reckless.
It isn't only the Russians who are calling us to task but our closest
ally, the United Kingdom. This is what an analyst in London's financial
district had to say:
The outlook for the British economy is decent but still
fairly fragile. Anything like a U.S. debt default with
significant global repercussions would be bad news for the
U.K.
That is a quote from Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global
Insight in London.
The Japanese, now emerging from a terrible economic circumstance, one
of our greatest creditors, are worried about their debtor, the United
States, paying its debts. Is anyone else embarrassed by this? We all
should be. This is the creation of politicians in Washington.
The Republican shutdown, the Republican refusal to extend the debt
ceiling is irresponsible and reckless. It will not only hurt these
foreign nations, it will not only hurt the reputation of the United
States as an economic leader in the world, it is going to hurt families
and businesses all over the United States. But don't take the word of
this Democratic Senator; go to the Business Roundtable, one of the
strongest supporters of the Republicans in Congress. They sent us a
letter last week and called the default on America's debt catastrophic,
begging Republicans and Democrats not to do anything this senseless.
What impact will it have on families? Hold on tight. Watch what
happens as we get up to this cliff or go over it when it comes to the
debt ceiling. You can follow it every day. If you have a mutual fund,
if you own a stock, if you have a savings account, or if you have a
retirement account, you can watch it melt away as the politicians give
their speeches on Capitol Hill.
It is totally irresponsible and reckless.
We need to open this government. We need to pay our bills. We can sit
down and negotiate everything and anything--that is the offer that has
been made--only after we have met our responsibilities.
Let me also add that Speaker Boehner said last week and some of us
were relieved to hear it: There will never be a default on America's
debt. He followed that up within 24 hours with a list of nonnegotiable
conditions before he would agree to that. That is not responsible. It
is reckless. It is reckless political conduct. How can we do this to
the families, to businesses, to the farmers, and to our allies around
the world?
It is time to say, as the Chaplain of the Senate did yesterday,
enough is enough. It is time for grownups to stand up on the other side
of the aisle and join grownups on this side of the aisle to do the
right thing: Open the government, pay our bills, sit down, and honestly
negotiate through these issues. We don't have much time. October 17 is
the deadline. Today is October 10. We have 1 week before the bottom
falls out of our economy and the economies around the world.
I listened to economists on the other side, the so-called really
conservative economists, say: It really doesn't matter. We can default.
We really don't need to extend our debt ceiling. These flat-earth
economists are the same folks who are in denial when it comes to other
scientific evidence in so many other areas, whether it is climate
change or evolution--you pick it. They are entitled to their views, as
fringe as they may be, as extreme as they may be. But to think that
Members of Congress, Members of the Senate are buying this line of
baloney is hard to understand and impossible to justify to the American
people.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I think one of the things we ought to be
observing, here at least, is courteous rules among ourselves. This is
meant to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. If we follow
the rules, follow the regular order, follow the committee process, and
follow the ways through the committee processes for resolving
disagreements and disputes, I think we can get through this.
I believe on both sides of the aisle there are pragmatic people
devoted to this country who want to solve the two major problems we
have facing us right this minute; that is, to reopen government,
because we are now in the 10th day of a shutdown; and, No. 2, to meet
the debt obligations of the United States of America as mandated in the
14th Amendment of the Constitution.
I call upon my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on both
sides of the dome: Let's reopen government. Let's pay our bills. And
let's get through the regular committee processes to solve our
problems.
There are those on the other side of the dome in the House of
Representatives that are proposing a new supercommittee. We have been
there, and we have done that. After the 2011 crisis, when we faced our
debt limit, there was a process put in place called a supercommittee.
It went nowhere. This new idea will go nowhere as well. It is a new
process that will only result in more delay.
I think we have two supercommittees. I call them supercommittees
because they are great committees. They are wonderful committees. That
is the Budget Committee chaired by Senator Patty Murray and her ranking
member Senator Jeff sessions, himself a distinguished judge from
Alabama, so he knows about conflict resolution. There is the
Appropriations Committee that deals with discretionary spending,
chaired by me and my vice chairman Senator Richard Shelby, again a
seasoned fiscal conservative who knows how to concentrate on the bottom
line so we can be a more frugal government but also be an effective
government. Let that committee do its job.
There is also the Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus. I
know the ranking member Senator Grassley from Iowa is on the floor. He
has an incredible history of being a compassionate conservative and he
knows the Tax Code and knows the values of Iowa--which is, let's put
country above party.
Instead of inventing new committees and new processes, free us up to
do our job. Free us up to be able to do what the committee process is
meant to be able to do.
For me and the Appropriations Committee, we moved all of our
appropriations bills. We are ready to come to the floor. We are ready
to go to conference if called up, if we have a method for being able to
move. We are ready to do it.
Senator Murray on the Budget Committee is ready to go to conference
with the House. But 21 times she was blocked by 6 naysayers primarily
representing a tea party, small faction within the Republican Party.
The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, has traditionally
understood that you maintain the values of the country, that you are
fiscally conservative, but you follow the rules that were established.
The rules of the Budget Committee passed by the Senate in the Budget
Control Act say they
[[Page S7361]]
were supposed to have their job done on April 15. Well, we moved the
budget on March 23, over 200 days ago, and over 20 requests to go to
conference with me, with Congressman Paul Ryan, and with his House
counterparts to work out what our discretionary spending should be.
What should our revenues be? What should we evaluate in terms of our
mandatory spending where we can take a look at it but not shrink those
earned benefits like Social Security and VA benefits that people count
on and work their whole life for and even put their life on the line?
We have to be able to do our job.
I will tell you what has been the latest situation that has so
shocked me. We are on the verge of being a deadbeat nation. We are on
the verge of being a global deadbeat nation. What is a deadbeat? A
deadbeat is someone who does not meet their financial obligations.
Over the last 3 days, we have heard about how the families of the men
and women who died in the line of duty serving their country and are
entitled to a death benefit were not going to get it because of the
government shutdown.
The Fisher family--well known for serving military families, well
known and so deeply cherished--offered to step forward to pay that. The
philanthropy of the United States, instead of the public responsibility
of the United States.
I want to thank the Fisher family for stepping forward. But, my gosh,
what humiliation. We are the United States of America, with the
strongest and best military in the world, and to honor its obligation
to its own, the United States has to borrow money for a death benefit.
That is deadbeat. I think it is humiliating. I think it is despicable.
It shows just how low we have sunk.
We can get it back. It is in our power because this isn't being
inflicted on us. This is what is being inflicted on us by other
Americans sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of
America. When they took that obligation, they didn't take that
obligation to just uphold the Amendments they like--like the second
one--but they took that obligation to uphold all of the Amendments.
Let's start with the 14th, which says that the debt of the United
States of America should not be called into question. That is clearly
in the Constitution. No matter what, America will pay its bills. The
reliability of the United States of America to meet its debt
obligations is the financial glue that helps to hold the global economy
together.
I am not going to go into doomsday or Armageddon or whatever. But if
you actually read what the ambassadors of China and Japan--one a great
ally and the other a formidable competitor--say: We are holding your
debt. Pay your bills, or a fiscal crisis will begin to unravel in your
country and around the world.
We cannot be a deadbeat nation. If we are a superpower, we must first
of all show our power by meeting our financial obligations. How we get
our public house in order by reducing our public debt is the subject
again of the Appropriations Committee, the Budget Committee, and the
Finance Committee. We have the capability to do it. I am really calling
upon my friends on the other side of the aisle--and there are many. And
it is not that we are pals. It is because we have come together out of
mutual respect to solve mutual problems, being of help to each other
mutually, that we have been able to keep the government functioning and
doing it in a way that is smart and affordable.
So I say, please, let's reopen government. I am calling upon the
House to pass the Senate continuing fiscal funding resolution that
would reopen government on November 15 and that process to lay the
groundwork for resolving our appropriations bills and canceling
sequester.
I call upon those six that are blocking us--meaning the Senate--from
going to the Budget Committee to do this. Those are two simple acts
within our power to do. I hope that we can do it.
I intended today to speak about how the shutdown is affecting
Maryland. We are really being hard hit. Maryland and Virginia have the
largest concentration of Federal agencies, both civilian and military,
in America. And, gee, we are proud of that. We are so proud of the fact
that we have the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug
Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
which works with our private sector that enables us to sell products
around the world.
We are so proud of the fact that we have the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to make sure that
we are looking out for large and small, whether it is to make sure that
our mattresses are not flammable or that our cribs and swimming pools
are safe for our children. I am proud of those agencies.
I am sorry that my Federal employees are not working. It is having a
terrible impact on the Maryland economy. Both our comptroller and our
Governor are talking about the significant amount of lost revenue that
we are having because people aren't working and they aren't buying. If
you talk to small businesses where these agencies are located, it is
just terrible.
I just want to tell one story. The Social Security Administration is
headquartered in Maryland in a community called Woodlawn, a wonderful
community with a vibrant, civic engagement. It is just great. Across
the street from the Social Security Administration is a small business
called the Salsa Grill. It is usually crowded with lunch hour people,
early morning coffee, those little baby showers that we women like to
have or a birthday party the guys are throwing for one of their pals at
lunchtime. The Salsa Grill last Friday, instead of 30 customers, had 3.
The owner was quoted as saying if the shutdown goes on much longer, he
won't be able to hang on any longer. This is what makes our economy
great.
I talked to one of the largest automobile dealers in Maryland. The
showrooms were empty in the Baltimore-Washington corridor last weekend,
even though they had wonderful cars, new cars. They were ready to do
deals for the old 2013 models they wanted to move out--empty; empty.
This ripples through our economy. This is not just, ``Oh, we are going
to contain government.'' We are hurting ourselves.
The fight about ObamaCare is over. Let's say goodbye to that fight.
Let's get on to the fiscal issues of the United States of America. I
say here, as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, I am ready to
negotiate. I am ready to meet, to compromise, to see how we can have
our domestic and defense discretionary spending done in a way that
begins to reduce our public debt but will also have a progrowth way of
public investments, making sure our country is safe, that we are
building roads, building the superinformation highway, educating our
young people, and doing research and development.
I know my time is up, but I believe very strongly that we have to
solve our problems. I am ready to say to the other side of the aisle
that I am ready to work together. That is because I have done it in the
past. We actually like doing it, for us pragmatists to get into a room,
solve problems, give and take, and actually learn from each other. I
could give many examples of that.
Right now we need to set the example for the world that we are the
greatest deliberative body. We have to get back to deliberating instead
of delaying.
Please, for the House, pass the continuing funding resolution. For
the Senate, limit your objection to the Budget Committee going into
conference. Let's reopen the government, let's pay our bills, and sit
down and negotiate in a way worthy of a great country, and let's honor
the Constitution of the United States.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments by the
distinguished chair of the Appropriations Committee. As she said, she
is ready to meet, ready to negotiate, ready to compromise, ready to
work together.
I come today to say tomorrow Republican Senators are finally going to
get a chance to talk with President Obama about reopening the
government and dealing with the debt this Nation has, dealing with the
debt limit.
Until very recently, President Obama has been far more interested in
speaking with the press than in actually speaking with Republicans.
Then we have this invitation to the White House. This morning in the
Washington Post, what the administration
[[Page S7362]]
says--it is a front-page article and it continues over to page 4--it
says the White House ``emphasized that Obama will not be negotiating.''
We have the chair of the Appropriations Committee saying she is ready
to meet, negotiate, and compromise, and the White House says President
Obama will not be negotiating.
The question is, why are we going over to the White House in the
first place if the President is not interested in negotiating? Is it
just to give him a photo op? I went to meetings like that during the
health care debate more than 3 years ago. The President at the time
would invite Republicans to a meeting and then he would reject every
idea we would offer. If he had been more willing to accept Republican
ideas, negotiate then, we would have had a bipartisan health reform
bill that was accepted by the American people instead of a law that
continues to have more people opposed than in favor of it.
That is going to be my message to the President tomorrow morning when
we meet. This needs to be a real discussion, a real negotiation, when
we agree on how we can reopen the Government, reduce our debt and help
our economy grow. This is the sixth time in 5 years that President
Obama has requested an increase in the debt ceiling. How much is he
asking for? According to the majority leader, I understand it is $1
trillion to extend between now until after the 2014 election.
That is an incredible amount of money. Just trying to figure out how
much money that is, it is over $1 million a minute. It is $1 million
every minute between now and 14 months from now. The President needs to
realize that is unsustainable. We have a $17 trillion debt. It is a
debt on the back of our children and our grandchildren. We have
families all across the country who have aspirations, anxieties, and
anger about even the idea that their children and grandchildren will
not be able to get careers, get jobs.
If we as a nation are going to incur more debt, we also have to find
real savings. We cannot continue to increase our credit card debt,
another new credit card after the President has maxed out the last one,
and send this bill to the American people. It is time to set
priorities. We want to get moving on real solutions, not just to our
short-term problems but the long-term issues that face us as a nation
as we try to work together in governing this Nation.
The House of Representatives has passed 12 individual continuing
resolutions. These bills would open many different parts of the
government right now, parts that we all agree should be kept operating.
The House voted to pay for FEMA, Head Start, the National Institutes of
Health, to open our national parks. Those bills have been sent to the
Senate. They have been sitting here without action at all.
Here in the Senate I know a lot of Democrats are saying they support
these functions. We see this picture on the front page of the
Washington Post this morning with the mayor, Mayor Vincent Gray, the
mayor of Washington, DC, on the steps of the Capitol, talking to the
majority leader saying, ``Sir, we are not a department of the
government. We are simply trying to be able to spend our own money.''
Yet the majority leader, who is blocking these votes to allow the
District of Columbia to do what they are requesting and what the House
has said yes, they should be able to do, the majority leader is saying,
``Don't screw it up, OK? Don't screw it up.''
The majority leader continues to object to votes on these bills.
History supports bipartisan action of the House and not the
stonewalling of the President and the Democratic leadership in the
Senate.
In the middle of the last government shutdown, Congress passed and
President Clinton signed laws to allow a wide variety of specific
programs to function. It is a precedent we should be following today.
The President also keeps saying he will not negotiate on the debt
limit. He tries to make people believe that never before has Congress
included ``issues that have nothing to do with the budget and nothing
to do with the debt''--this is the President's quote--in its
negotiation over the debt limit.
The facts are not on the President's side. Even the Fact Checker in
the Washington Post gave the President four Pinocchios on that claim,
essentially saying it was completely not true. Negotiations have
actually occurred many times on the debt limit.
From 1978 until 2013, the debt limit has been raised 53 times. Of
those votes, the debt ceiling increase was linked to something else
more than half the time. So more than half of the debt limit increase
votes since 1978 carried other provisions. They were not, as the
President claims, clean increases.
The President wants to ignore that history. The President wants to
pretend that raising the debt limit is something that has to be done
without any deliberations, negotiations, dissent, and on his terms
alone. He says he will not negotiate at all.
It is strange to be coming from his mouth because that is very
different from the position that came out of his mouth when he was
Senator Obama. That was not that many years ago. In 2006, Senator Obama
voted against a debt limit increase because he said it was a sign that
Washington cannot pay its bills. Senator Obama complained that the
Federal debt had increased by $5 trillion in 5 years. Under President
Obama, Washington's debt has grown by more than $6 trillion in 4 years.
Senator Obama said, ``The more we depend on foreign nations to lend
us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of
foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.''
Under President Obama, foreign holdings of Federal debt have
increased by 82 percent.
Senator Obama said that, ``Washington is shifting the burden of bad
choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.'' He
said at the time, ``America has a debt problem, and a failure of
leadership.''
A debt problem and a failure of leadership.
President Obama is now asking for his sixth increase in debt in less
than 5 years. Why is this, then, not a debt problem and a failure of
leadership?
Senator Obama was right to say at the time we have a debt problem.
President Obama should remember what made him say that in 2006, and do
something about it now. He should join Republicans willing to talk
about real entitlement reform as part of negotiations over raising the
debt ceiling. He should be willing and anxious to talk about his health
care law and how it is going to become a major factor driving
Washington's debt even higher in the future if we do not replace it
with responsible reforms today.
The President should embrace bipartisan continuing resolutions passed
by the House as a way of reopening as much of the government as
possible while we have responsible and reasonable discussions,
deliberations, and negotiations. President Obama should stop posturing,
stop playing games, and stop punishing the American people as he has
been doing under this current government shutdown.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday we learned that for the
remainder of the government shutdown one of America's great charitable
organizations, the Fisher House Foundation, will provide survivor
benefits to military families who have lost a loved one on the field of
battle. Fisher House is really just almost too good to believe, a
wonderful charity that has helped military families all across our
country, including folks in seven different facilities in Texas, from
the VA North Texas Health Care System to the William Beaumont Army
Medical Center in El Paso, the Carl R. Darnall Medical Center, the
Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, to the Brooke Army Medical Center
in San Antonio, the Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center, and the
South Texas Veterans Health Care System. I personally extend my thanks
and express my gratitude to Fisher House for making such a tremendous
commitment to our military heroes and making such a generous offer for
the families of the fallen.
[[Page S7363]]
Secretary Hagel was quoted when he announced that Fisher House was
going to fill the gap left by the cutoff of Federal funds, saying he
was ``offended, outraged, and embarrassed that the government shutdown
had prevented the Department of Defense from fulfilling this most
sacred responsibility in a timely manner.''
I agree with his outrage and sense of offense and embarrassment. But
I want to recall how we got here. If our friends across the aisle had
simply agreed to delay the individual mandate and to eliminate the
special congressional carveout under ObamaCare, this never would have
happened.
We have now reached day 10 of the shutdown. Over the last week and a
half, administration officials have done as much as they possibly can
to make this shutdown as painful as possible. They made the decision to
barricade the World War II memorials and monuments along the National
Mall, hoping to keep out our veterans, many near the end of their
lives, for whom these monuments were built as a way of honoring their
sacrifice. They kept these barricades in their way to impede or perhaps
prevent them from visiting things such as the World War II Memorial.
The Obama administration we know has temporarily closed or interfered
with privately run parks and historic sites, such as the Claude Moore
Colonial Farm in Northern Virginia.
Why would the administration, in order to turn up the heat or
increase the pain of the shutdown, impose itself to shut down a
privately run park? Well, there is a reason for that, and it is because
this is a cynical game--not one designed to get to a solution but one
to gain political advantage. It should be offensive, embarrassing, and
outrageous--to use the words of Secretary Hagel--for a political party
to try to use a shutdown for such craven political gain.
Meanwhile, our Democratic friends have refused to support legislation
that would reopen our memorials and national parks and fund the
National Institutes of Health. I heard the distinguished assistant
majority leader come to the floor a few days ago and decry the fact
that cancer research for children was being temporarily stopped because
of the shutdown. We have come to the floor and offered a bill that
would reopen it, along with clinical trials, and it has been refused by
our Democratic colleagues. We have come to the floor--and the House has
passed these bills--and said: Let's fund the Veterans' Administration
to make sure the backlog of disability claims gets taken care of and so
our veterans who have given so much and sacrificed so much don't have
to wait on getting their disability claims processed. That was objected
to by the majority leader. They also objected to funding our military
Reserves. As I said, they seem intent on maximizing the pain in hopes
of gaining political advantage. That is outrageous, that is
embarrassing, and it should be embarrassing.
Before I conclude, I want to say to all the military families out
there who have lost a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a father, or
a mother on the field of battle--I want to leave you with the words of
a great American President who said:
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of
your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of
the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours
to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Those noble and inspiring words in that prayer are the type of
tribute we should be giving to those families who have lost loved ones
on the field of battle, not the sort of shortsighted political
treatment that has been given by the efforts across the aisle to shut
down every reasonable opportunity to alleviate some of this hardship
and to mitigate some of the pain.
We have done it together successfully when it comes to paying our
uniformed Active-Duty military. We got a unanimous consent agreement
between the parties to make sure our Active-Duty troops are getting
paid. Why is it we can't do the same thing with the survivors of those
who lost their lives on the field of battle?
When I asked unanimous consent yesterday for the majority leader to
agree to that piece of legislation, he asked to delay consideration of
that request until the Defense Department could announce its proposal
with the Fisher House. Again, I commend the Fisher House for stepping
up and trying to fill the void, but why should we not do our job? Why
should Congress not act? We should act and I hope very soon. We can do
our job and honor these fallen and their families in an appropriate way
by coming together as Republicans and Democrats and making sure these
survivor benefits to the families who have lost loved ones on the field
of battle are paid on a timely basis without being caught up in the
political games occurring inside the Halls of Congress.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in
morning business for up to 15 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Climate Change
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, a colleague recently described on this
floor his experience flying in a private aircraft when a fire broke out
in the cockpit of the plane. He observed that putting out the fire
distracted the pilots from flying the aircraft and that they
precipitously lost altitude. This tea party shutdown and the tea
party's threat to our country's credit, like that fire in the cockpit,
are distracting us from flying the plane.
I dispute the notion that those who caused the shutdown have good
standing to come to this floor and criticize the way the Obama
administration is implementing a shutdown that we don't want on our
side of the aisle and that the Obama administration does not want. The
tea party and Speaker Boehner, for their insistence on lighting that
fire in the cockpit, are answerable to history and their consciences.
In the spirit of getting back to flying the plane, I will talk about,
as I usually do, a real and looming crisis--not the manmade fire the
tea party has lit in the cockpit of our government. That tea party
shutdown could end tomorrow if the Speaker of the House would simply
call up the measure the Senate passed. He refuses to do so, and it is
his continued indulgence that keeps this shutdown going.
Climate change is for real. It is not manmade, nor is it something
the Speaker can turn off with a vote. It is coming at us, and it is
time to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and
ocean.
Regrettably, one of the reasons Congress is still asleep is that the
worst culprits--the big corporations that do the worst carbon
polluting--are pretending it is not that bad, it is not that serious,
and they should keep doing what they are doing; the status quo is fine.
It causes me to wonder why it is that corporations seem never to admit
they are wrong. Why is ``oops'' a word they can't seem to use?
When it turned out that people would be a lot safer with seatbelts,
did the car industry say: Oops. We should have put those in and put
seatbelts in the cars. No. They fought and they had to be defeated, and
then we got seatbelts.
When cigarette makers found out their product made people really
addicted and really sick, did they say: Oops. We better figure out a
way to not kill so many people. No. They fought and they lied for
decades.
When it turned out that lead paint damaged children's brains, did the
lead paint companies say: Oops. We better warn folks about that and
clean it up. No. They fought against protections and had to be
defeated. Indeed, they are still fighting.
When it turned out that aerosol refrigerants and propellants were
eating away at the Earth's ozone layer, did the manufacturers say:
Oops. That is dangerous, and we better come up with a safer product.
No. They fought the change, but they lost, and now they are making
money making new safer products.
When acid rain was killing off the fish in the northeastern lakes,
did the big utilities say: Oops. We better clean up our emissions. No.
They fought the changes until they were forced to clean up.
When the flame-retardant industry found out its product was dangerous
and ineffective, did they say: Oops. This flame-retardant stuff is
hurting people and doing creepy things in nature, so we better knock it
off. Nope. It is still fighting while whales turn into swimming toxic
waste.
[[Page S7364]]
Now that carbon pollution has blown through 400 parts per million of
CO2 in the atmosphere--a first in human history--and
launched the most rapid acidification ever seen in the oceans--and by
that I mean going back to geologic time--are the polluters saying:
Oops. We better take our billions of dollars in profit and trillions of
dollars in capital and invest seriously in new fuels and power sources.
Fat chance.
Corporations that are harming people never say ``oops,'' and for two
big reasons. One reason is there is a lot of money at stake. They would
not be in the business if they were not making money, and they don't
want to stop. The other reason is that corporations don't have
consciences, they have reputations. A reputation is something you can
manage. Huge chunks of Madison Avenue and K Street are dedicated to
managing corporate reputations. So with no conscience and only a
reputation, you manage the problem that you are harming people.
By now, the strategy for managing a corporate reputation while
hurting people is well developed. It is a common one across cigarettes,
acid rain, lead paint, flame-retardants, refrigerants, and now carbon
pollution. There is a playbook, and guess what. The big carbon
polluters are following the playbook: one, pretend to care--that is
important; two, attack the science, and if you can't attack the
science, attack the scientists themselves; three, claim it will cost
consumers a fortune; and four, make your goal not victory but doubt.
Pretend to care.
I don't know if you remember those phony-baloney Exxon ads that were
all over the place a while ago with guys in lab coats, and they had
these Lucite molecules floating around. They wanted you to believe they
were out there looking for tomorrow's clean fuels. Well, you got had.
Since 2005 ExxonMobil has been making tens of billions of dollars in
profit every year. It is hard to pick through their numbers, but
sources report that over that same time it only spent tens of millions
per year on clean energy--about what it spent on advertising. They
spent as much advertising their clean energy, it appears, as they did
investing in it, and it was a tiny fraction of their profits, let alone
their revenues.
Remember BP and their green Sun baloney? BP pulled completely out of
solar and completely out of U.S. wind investments once it had laid down
a fat barrage of advertising about being beyond petroleum. Pretend to
care.
Attack the science and even the scientists themselves.
The polluters have to do this through proxies. Nobody will really
believe it if Exxon's fingerprints are all over the attack on the
science, so others do the dirty work.
One example is Virginia's tea party attorney general Ken Cuccinelli,
who attacked the top climate scientist at the University of Virginia.
He used his powers of office--the special powers of office that are
entrusted to attorneys general. Having been an attorney general, I know
something about how precious and special those powers are. He used
those powers to harass and subpoena a college professor. UVA's lawyers
stuck up for the professor, and the Virginia Supreme Court threw that
nonsense out. But for the polluters behind it, it was right out of the
playbook.
You may remember the polluters whipping up a phony scandal called
climategate, pretending that a group of climate scientists were doing
dishonest work. The scientists had to endure audit after audit, every
single one of which gave them a totally clean bill of health. It turned
out it was the cooked-up, phony scandal that was dishonest, but the
polluters had a field day in the meantime. It was right out of the
playbook.
Claim it will cost consumers a fortune.
This is a playbook classic. The big polluters are always talking
about how it will cost you to clean up their act. Implicit is that they
are going to put all the costs on to you and that they are not going to
eat any of it and that their shareholders are not going to bear any of
it.
Let's get past that. What they conveniently overlook is that, for
instance, under the Clean Air Act--yes, complying with the Clean Air
Act did cost utilities a lot of money, but for every $1 that was spent
cleaning up to comply with the Clean Air Act, Americans have saved
about $40. They spend $1, you save $40, and they want you to believe
that is a big problem?
The Office of Management and Budget does a little calculation called
the social cost of carbon. The latest cost is $36 per ton of
CO2 emitted. For every ton of carbon pollution the polluters
don't sell, we save $36. But they will never tell us that side of the
story, nor that there are more jobs now in green energy than in the
entire oil and gas industry, nor that we are in an international race
for tomorrow's clean energy technology innovations. It is a race these
big international corporations are perfectly happy to have America
lose. It is no skin off their nose.
Last, their goal is not victory, it is doubt. They don't want to
convince anyone that climate change isn't happening. They don't need to
do that. Of course, they couldn't do that in any kind of a fair debate.
All they need to do, the playbook strategy says, is to convince us, as
we are driving down the road listening to the radio, that nobody is
sure yet; that there is some doubt, but we don't need to do anything
just yet; that people can move on to their next worry; this one is
still up for grabs. They will keep trying to push action on carbon
pollution over that horizon of doubt, never having to prove their case.
The American people are being played for chumps in this game. It is a
racket, and we are the mark.
Even so, even with all of that, the facts around us--what is
happening to our woods and shores and farms and weather--are becoming
so clear that even with the playbook they are losing, just like they
ultimately lost on cigarettes and seatbelts, on lead paint and acid
rain and the ozone hole.
Here is what Americans are saying: 61 percent of Americans say the
effects of climate change are already affecting them personally or they
see it happening in their lifetime.
Fifty-eight percent said the country should do more to address
climate change, including 51 percent of Independents, while just 14
percent--14 percent--said we are doing enough already.
Sixty-five percent of voters support ``the President taking
significant steps to address climate change now''--65 percent. That
number jumps up to 70 percent when looking at voters under 40 years
old.
Sixty-six percent of young voters--two out of every three--say
climate change is a problem to address, while just 27 percent say
climate change is a natural event that humans can't affect, and only 3
percent don't believe climate change is happening.
Fifty-three percent of people say they would be less likely to vote
for a politician who did not understand that climate change is a real
problem.
Even in the red State of Texas, 70 percent believe global warming is
happening, and more than half say more should be done about global
warming at all levels of government.
Today is day 10 of the tea party shutdown. As we have pointed out
over and over, it is a manufactured crisis. It goes away the instant
Speaker Boehner stands in the House and calls the measure the Senate
has passed, without amendments and without gimmicks, to the floor. It
will pass. The crisis will be over.
This crisis is different. This is not a crisis of a fire in the
cockpit that is being kept burning by Speaker Boehner who could stop it
at any time; this is for real. This is Mother Nature--400 parts per
million for the first time in 800,000 years is serious.
The tea party Republicans are wildly out of step with the American
people on both issues, and it is time for them to wake up.
Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request, if I may ask the
distinguished Senator from Georgia to yield for one moment.
I ask unanimous consent that Senators on the majority side be limited
to 10 minutes each until 1 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized for up to 8
minutes.
[[Page S7365]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
QRM Rule
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, on August 28 of this year, the six
Federal regulators of the banking industry reported out on their charge
to promulgate a rule required by Dodd-Frank known as the QRM rule or
the qualified residential mortgage.
The qualified residential mortgage rule was a rule that Senator
Landrieu, Senator Hagan, and I put into the Dodd-Frank legislation to
provide for a parameter for residential mortgage loans to be exempted
from the risk retention requirements of Dodd-Frank if they met a
certain standard. These regulators were charged with establishing that
standard. That law passed over 5 years ago and we are just now getting
the promulgation of the rule, but I am happy to say I rise on the floor
of the Senate to memorialize my support for a job well done. The
qualified residential mortgage rule, which is being circulated now
until October 28, is the right answer for the requirement of Dodd-Frank
and for the American housing industry.
For the education of the Senate and the public at large, the Dodd-
Frank law, in its desire to make sure loans that were underwritten were
better underwritten and loans that were made were better made loans so
there would be less default and less problems in the housing industry,
required the banking industry to make only qualified residential
mortgages as defined.
The original discussions within the banking industry were that part
of that definition would be a required 20-percent downpayment, which I
and many people in America strenuously objected to, because a 20-
percent requirement to exempt from risk retention would be far too
great a downpayment for most American families to meet, would have
probably meant a decline in the housing market, even greater than we
experienced in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, and would have had a
negative impact on America's economy, unemployment, and America's
health and well-being.
So the banking regulators did a great job in their rule which does
the following: First of all, it equates QRM, or the qualified
residential mortgage rule, with the QM rule, or the qualified mortgage
rule, which Richard Cordray, the Director of the Consumer Finance
Protection Bureau, promulgated 1 year ago. Mr. Cordray did an
outstanding job of seeking input from people in the industry and the
trades affected by the housing industry and wrote a rule that made
sense. That rule required the following: It required good, solid
underwriting. It required a maximum ratio of total debts to total gross
income of 43 percent so we would not have somebody borrowing more than
half of their take-home pay or their gross pay in order to service
debts. That would mean people would have the money to pay their
mortgage.
It required people to verify their income, credit, employment, the
value of the property that is being purchased with the loan. All of
those things are the standards that served America well for years until
the subprime lending took place from 1999 until 2006.
So I commend Richard Cordray and the Consumer Finance Protection
Bureau for defining a qualified mortgage as one that is well
underwritten. A required downpayment is not necessary to have a
qualified mortgage because underwriting is what led us into the
difficulties of the past 5 years in the housing industry.
We went through a recession that was not a downpayment recession but
an underwriting recession, and Congress itself was partially to blame
when it mandated that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae hold a certain
percentage of their portfolios in what is known as qualified
residential mortgages for the purposes of meeting the needs of
underserved people in our society. Those underserved people in society
ended up being credit risks or higher credit risks. They became known
as subprime lenders. They got guaranteed by the government. They were
sold in securities. When they defaulted, the securities went down, the
American housing industry went down and the American Federal Reserve
had to bail out people such as AIG and we went through the worst
housing crisis in the history of the United States.
So the proposal of the six banking regulators to merge QRM and QM,
they are recognizing that underwriting is the key to sound loans. By
requiring good underwriting to exempt from the 5-percent risk retention
required in Dodd-Frank, we are ensuring a robust housing market, robust
and available capital through Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and private
institutions, to ensure housing in America can return to the heights it
has known in the past.
Quite frankly, we are never going to get below 7 percent
unemployment, we are never going to get higher than 2 percent growth in
America in our economy until we return to a robust housing market. We
are not going to return to a robust housing market until we get
liquidity in the credit markets for residential mortgages of a
conventional nature. That is only going to happen when Freddie Mac and
Fannie Mae can secure well underwritten loans and guarantee them so
they can be sold in the marketplace.
The banking regulators who are now circulating the QRM rule for
public comment did precisely the right thing by recognizing that
underwriting was the problem and not downpayments.
Lastly, one of the things the regulators did put in their proposal
for circulation for input was what if they did require a downpayment of
30 percent, would that be an exemption for the risk retention under
QRM. I would implore the regulators not to consider doing that because
a 30-percent downpayment would be even worse than a 20-percent
downpayment. It would restrict even more Americans from becoming
homeowners, and it would not address the problem. The problem was
underwriting. The problem was not downpayment. Credit enhancements such
as private mortgage insurance and things of that nature can supplant a
downpayment requirement, but nothing can supplant quality underwriting.
Richard Cordray wrote a good rule, the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau is enforcing that rule, and I commend the bank regulators for
merging the QRM rule with the QM definition to ensure that we return to
a robust economy with a strong housing market, don't revisit the
problems of the past with shoddy underwriting, and instead look forward
to a brighter future for the American housing market.
I yield the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, for nearly 2 weeks I have
watched the debate on the Senate floor as well as on the House floor,
and I have become more and more frustrated. My frustration is, in
part--I would say in large part--driven by the contrast to what I see
going on in my home State of Colorado.
During the past several weeks, Coloradans have come together in the
wake of Biblical rains and beyond devastating flooding to begin the
long process of rebuilding our State better and stronger. We in the
West--and I think I can say we as Americans--are rugged cooperators.
Sure, we are each strong individuals--and that is a strong point of
view in the West; it is the core of who we are, that we are strong as
individuals--but we know we are best when we band together, despite any
political or philosophical differences, to face our shared challenges.
I am doing my level best to bring that spirit to Washington, DC,
especially now in this time of shutdowns and ultimatums and ideology
that doesn't make sense to the people I represent in Colorado. I invite
all of my colleagues to come to Colorado to see the collaborations
occurring in these flood-ravaged communities such as Jamestown, Lyons
and Estes Park and Fort Morgan. There are no games. There is no
posturing. There is no politics. There is just a doggedness to make
their communities better. I surely hope the strength and the focus of
Coloradans could be an inspiration to all of us as we tackle what are
very pressing policy issues.
On that note, I wish to speak about one of my constituents, someone I
work for--Jeff. He is a Federal employee. He demonstrates the
resilience, to me, of the people of Colorado. But his situation also
typifies the worst of what this shutdown and this brinkmanship is doing
to the real people, the good people of my State of Colorado.
Jeff is a Federal employee. He was trapped for 3 days in last month's
flood. That flood cost him almost everything. He has very few
possessions
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left. Once he was free, he went immediately back to his day job. He was
working for an agency that is integral to the flood disaster response.
What happened? The government closed. So now he rents out an apartment.
His home is inaccessible, literally, due to the flooding. He doesn't
have a paycheck and he is being told he is not essential and he
shouldn't come in to work.
There are a lot of reactions I have to that. There are a lot of
reactions anybody who is paying attention would have to that. One is
that now there is one less pair of boots on the ground helping with the
flood response efforts in Colorado.
To a certain extent, politics is about finding the right strategy to
advocate for what a person believes is right. But what is going on
right now is shameful. What is happening to Jeff is flatout shameful.
What we are seeing is one faction of one party, in one Chamber, in
one branch of government, holding this Nation's health, economy, and
security hostage and, in the process, causing the Federal Government to
shut down and threatening a government default on our obligations. By
doing so, these individuals are holding our flood recovery hostage. It
makes no sense.
I guess you have to ask yourself why. Why would a small group, a
faction, be doing this? It strikes me that in part they are doing it
because they are obsessed with undermining a law that is providing
affordable health care to Americans, some for the first time in their
lives, a law that is saving seniors hundreds of dollars a year on
prescription drugs and is leveling the playing field when it comes to
providing health care and putting consumers back in charge of their own
health care.
I want to make this clear: After having legally passed both Houses of
Congress, being affirmed by the Supreme Court, and then serving as a
referendum in the just concluded campaign that overwhelmingly reelected
President Obama, the Affordable Care Act is settled law. Let me say
that again. The Affordable Care Act is settled law.
But describing it as settled law alone I know is not enough to
resolve this latest crisis. So I would like to take viewers and my
colleagues back a decade when the Presiding Officer was a Member of
House at that time, when President George W. Bush pushed us to pass
what was an unpaid-for Medicaid prescription drug benefit.
Members of my caucus over in the House felt that this massive unpaid
law was thrust upon us without due consideration and at a time when we
should not be racking up further debt. Many of us on my side of the
aisle were literally reeling with anger after it passed. It also passed
in ways with which we disagreed, in the middle of the night, literally.
The desk in the House was kept open--I think the Presiding Officer
knows--for close to 4 hours to find those last votes.
I was angry. I voted against that Medicare prescription drug benefit.
I am sure I was as angry as some of my colleagues were when the
Affordable Care Act passed over 3 years ago.
So what did I do? I took a lot of deep breaths. I listened to the
counsel of people I respect, I listened to my own counsel, and I not
only decided it was settled law, but I decided to start holding
townhalls and listening sessions so I could help my constituents sign
up for it. I knew it was the settled law of the land, just like
ObamaCare is today, and I wanted my constituents to be best served by
its implementation.
So I went out and spread the word about the benefits, figured out
what questions my constituents would have. I wanted them to sign up. I
wanted to make it a success. I wanted them to have those benefits.
So let's fast forward to today. Far from helping people, our friends
and colleagues on the other side of the aisle have relentlessly spread
uncertainty about ObamaCare, attacking its implementation at every
turn, and now to close down the Federal Government over their concerns
about it.
We are in the 10th day of a government shutdown. Our national
security has suffered. Seventy percent of the intelligence community is
furloughed. We do not have enough food inspectors on the job. Our
veterans are not getting the services not only that they need but that
they have earned. Our national parks are closed, hurting economies like
ours in Colorado. I mentioned Estes Park. Estes Park is the gateway to
Rocky Mountain National Park. If Estes Park is going to recover from
these devastating floods, Rocky Mountain National Park has to be open
for business.
This is not how the greatest Nation in the world can go on doing
business. I have said from the very beginning--I think the Presiding
Officer agrees with me--the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect. No
mandate law is. As with every law, it will undoubtedly need some
improvements and some constructive changes during its implementation. I
am committed to doing that, just like we did after President Bush moved
his prescription drug law to the finish line.
In the past few days we have seen statements indicating that some
Republicans are starting to understand that this partisan focus on
ObamaCare is futile. So as their next step they have seized on yet
another destructive tactic, manufacturing a new crisis, an even more
serious, potentially devastating crisis than shutting down the
government. What have they done? They are threatening the full faith
and credit of the Federal Government to push their budget demands. They
have threatened to force us past the deadline, which is October 17--
that is a week from today--when the United States will no longer be
able to meet its financial obligations.
Grandstanding on funding the government is bad enough. If we do not
agree on a way forward to reopen the government, but we also do not
agree on a way to ensure that the Treasury Department does not default
on our Nation's debt obligations, we will seriously damage global
confidence in the United States, make no mistake. There are some voices
in this building who think that will not happen. They are wrong.
If we damage the global confidence in the United States, we are going
to hamper our economic recovery, we will slow job creation, and we will
make borrowing costs more expensive for government and families alike.
This is no way to win the global economic race in which we find
ourselves. Coloradans are telling me in every way they can that they
expect a lot better than this.
Ronald Reagan used to joke in only the way he could that he was not
worried about the debt; it is big enough to take care of itself. But
every American should worry if Congress refuses to meet the obligations
we have already made.
I know many Americans are worried about our debt and our capacity to
pay the bills we have incurred. I have been worried about this for a
long time. I think if you would ask anybody around here, they would
tell you I would vote in a minute for a sensible grand bargain. It is
true. I have worked across the aisle and built a record of efforts to
reduce wasteful spending and set our budget on a more sustainable
footing. It should be one of our top priorities. It has to be one of
our top priorities.
I have been a longtime supporter of the line-item veto. I supported
the initial structure around which the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction
commission worked. I called for an end to earmarks. I worked with
Senator Coburn from Oklahoma on ending some wasteful public subsidies,
including those for the political party conventions every 4 years. It
is why I was the first Democrat to champion a balanced budget amendment
to the U.S. Constitution in many a year. I am not the only Member, as
well, of my party who has been fighting for commonsense reforms.
This is critically important work. I would love nothing more than to
bring a serious deficit reduction plan to the floor and pass it along
with raising our debt limit to avoid an American default.
But let me be crystal clear: To default on our debt because a grand
bargain eludes us would make our debt and deficits even worse and
thrust us into an economic tailspin. It is irresponsible to even
suggest forcing America into default as a legitimate negotiating
position.
Let's sit down and have a grownup discussion about these important
issues, but not like this. Let's fund the government, let's pay our
bills, and then let's sit down and negotiate again. Negotiation is
good. Compromise is good. But we cannot have this important set of
discussions with one party constantly threatening to shut down
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the government or throw our country into default, each of which makes
our deficits and debt even worse.
We have, literally, centuries of examples of a Congress
collaborating, working together. We have done that for over 200 years.
We can debate, we can have contentious back-and-forth, but in the end
we need to compromise and agree. We need a comprehensive and balanced
deficit reduction plan that can pass both Chambers and be signed into
law.
No party gets to threaten the American economy and shut down the
government when they do not get their way. No party gets to jeopardize
middle-class families' 401(k)s or senior citizens' retirement savings
or set our economic recovery back just because their positions are not
strong enough to prevail on their own.
That just is not the way to address our Nation's shared problems. And
trust me, our debt and deficits are a shared problem. We can do better.
I want to begin to conclude by again referring to the Coloradans I am
so fortunate to represent, just like the Presiding Officer, I know, is
honored to represent the good people of Wisconsin. Coloradans have
shown the true strength of our State in the wake of this tragic
flooding that literally has wiped communities off the map and destroyed
thousands of homes. If we could have done anything to prevent that
natural disaster, we would have.
We now face a potential manmade disaster. We have to protect
Americans from a looming manmade disaster that is emerging right here.
We have to bridge the partisan divide. We have to end this government
shutdown. We have to stave off an American default. We have to pay our
bills. We could do this today if Speaker Boehner would just allow the
House to vote on a clean funding resolution that we have already sent
to the House, with the House numbers in it, by the way. So let's just
see a vote in the House. The continuing resolution would pass in the
House today with Republican and Democratic votes.
So let's just vote. Let's hold the vote. The Presiding Officer and I
served in the House. When we were eager to go to work we would shout:
Vote, vote, vote; work, work, work. It is time for the House to go to
work. Let's vote to end this debt ceiling crisis and make sure our
Nation pays the debts it has already incurred.
These are the basic functions of Congress. If we fail to act, history
will never forgive us--any of us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, I rise today to discuss the multiple
issues that have now presented themselves to us in the Senate and to
the U.S. Congress and, frankly, the American people.
I have been in several hearings this morning. The first was with
Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew, where the Finance Committee
discussed with him the pending expiration of our debt ceiling and what
his understanding is of how that will impact the country. He raised a
lot of serious concerns--very legitimate serious concerns--that others
are raising.
We then followed that up with a hearing in the Banking Committee
where we had representatives from a number of the various industries in
the United States also discussing what is going to happen in the United
States if the country does not increase the debt ceiling. And there are
serious consequences that will happen if we do not do this.
But what I tried to do in both of those hearings--and I will refer to
my conversation with Secretary Lew--was to focus us back on the
broader, bigger threat. Secretary Lew basically said that we have a
manufactured crisis in the United States because of our unwillingness
at this point to face the debt ceiling and simply extend the debt
ceiling without any kinds of conditions or negotiations.
I reminded him that the crisis we face--the big crisis we face--is
the debt crisis, and it is very real. I guess in a sense it has been
manufactured over the last 20 or 30 years by Congresses and Presidents
who have refused to control spending and have put us into tremendous
debt.
Our debt ceiling we are negotiating about right now--or I think
wishing we could negotiate about right now--is $16.7 trillion. It has
grown by trillions of dollars over the last 5 or 6 years.
What the President has asked us to do is to once again increase the
debt ceiling by another $1 trillion or more with no reforms, no fiscal
changes in our policies to deal with the mounting spending crisis we
face. The President's position is: You give me this $1 trillion or more
of new debt authority, and I will then talk to you about reforming our
fiscal policy. The problem is we have been trying to negotiate over
fiscal policy now and trying to get reforms put into place for years
and we have not been able to get there.
When I asked Secretary Lew about this, he basically said: We have
made progress on our overall debt crisis in the past few years, and I
think we can continue to work on those kinds of steps if you will
simply pass this clean debt ceiling extension and do so in a way that
involves no negotiations from the President in any way.
I reminded him that a major part of the progress we have made in the
last couple of years was made when we met the debt ceiling 2 years ago
in 2011. It was the Budget Control Act that put into statute over $2
trillion of reductions in our spending path. That was attached to the
debt ceiling as we moved forward. It was literally the debt ceiling
negotiation that generated the only significant spending controls this
Congress, this country, has seen for years and years. Yet the President
refuses to take another step now that we have met the debt ceiling
again and negotiate for further reforms.
By the way, there is another reason we have made some progress in the
past few years. That is that we have implemented massive new taxes on
the American people. The ObamaCare legislation itself contains nearly
$1 trillion of new taxes, and although they were delayed for a few
years, they are now beginning to fully hit the American people. Last
January, the President was able to win his argument and succeed in
getting the top income tax brackets raised, an impact on our Tax Code
that I think was harmful rather than helpful and clearly was damaging
to the creation of jobs and to businesses across the United States.
But, nevertheless, another $500 billion to $600 billion of tax revenue
was put into the mix there.
So what have we done? We have made a plan to control discretionary
spending over the next 10 years and reduce it by about $2 trillion. If
we stick to that, we will get $2 trillion worth of spending reductions.
We have raised taxes by at least $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years,
all of which, I believe, has been harmful to our economy, but has
generated revenue to try to help reduce the debt cycle. But we have not
addressed the two critical parts of reform that we must address in this
country if we are ever going to get control of our spending excesses
and stop the out-of-control spiral toward insolvency that we see; that
is, reforming our entitlement system and reforming our broken Tax Code.
What have we seen there? Virtually minimal, if any at all, reforms of
entitlements. They seem to be off the table. Yet they are the part of
our spending problem that is the biggest and the most out of control.
On tax reform, we have seen no reform of the Tax Code. We have a Tax
Code that is the most unfair, the most complicated, the most expensive
to comply with, and the most anticompetitive code we probably could
have created if we did it on purpose. Yet we have no reforms of the
code. Instead what we have done is add to the code another $1.6
trillion of new taxes on the American people.
What we are asking is whether we can move forward in trying to deal
with our fiscal problems in this country by negotiating over
entitlement reform and tax reform. I frankly believe we ought to be at
the negotiating table talking about that. But what we have been told
is: No, as soon as you raise the debt ceiling by--the amount we are
hearing is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion--as soon as you
raise the debt ceiling, then we can talk further about other
negotiations, then we can get engaged in trying to deal with our debt
crisis.
I pointed out, as I said to Secretary Lew, that the last major
progress we made on spending reform happened in negotiations relating
to our debt ceiling. Why cannot we negotiate now and
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make significant fiscal reform in addition to dealing with our debt
ceiling? It is that debt crisis that is the biggest problem.
I was on the Bowles-Simpson Commission, the President's own
commission, that he put together some years back, 2 or 3 years now. We
spent a full year studying the impacts on our economy of America's
fiscal excess and what we needed to do. The Bowles-Simpson Commission
came up with a plan. It was a proposal. We concluded that--this was 2
or 3 years back--we needed to reduce our spending path, our debt path
in the United States by at least $4 trillion. We concluded we had to
deal with that by reforming our entitlement system and we had to deal
with it by controlling discretionary spending. We agreed to having some
of that tax revenue the President was demanding. We also agreed that in
the overall mix we would have about a 3-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to
revenue.
The President did not accept that recommendation. Many of us tried
for months and months and months afterward to get that recommendation
to the floor for a vote. But it has not made it to the floor for a
vote.
My point is, negotiations have been under way for years and years.
Significant plans have been developed that would help us move forward.
We know what to do. We need to have the will to do it. So far, the only
reforms we have been able to get in the last few years as a result of
the debt crisis that we face have come when we have met these pressure
points dealing with our debt ceiling.
We are not asking to shut down the government for the purpose of
simply making a point. We are trying to get to negotiations. We want to
see the government reopened. We are not seeking to have the debt
ceiling expire. We want to have negotiations to be able to put together
the kinds of fiscal reforms that should always accompany extensions of
the debt ceiling.
I believe the reason Congress put a statutory debt ceiling in place
in the first place was because it wanted to give America a gut check
every so often about the spending problems we have. We have put almost
half of the entire spending system of the government on auto pilot. We
do not even have the opportunity to vote on it here in Congress.
Ultimately, we have to deal with the debt ceiling. Ultimately, we
have to deal with the funding to keep our government operational. Let's
not just move forward and accomplish those objectives, leaving in place
the unrestrained fiscal crisis we are dealing with in this country.
Let's use this opportunity to put together the kinds of fiscal reforms
that should accompany decisions to allow our country to increase its
debt.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Republican whip.
Mr. CORNYN. Yesterday I came to the floor with the distinguished
majority leader to raise the issue of survivor benefits to those who
died in the line of duty. Reportedly, 26 servicemembers have died since
the government shut down on October 1, including 5 in combat. Their
families have been denied the basic survivor benefits, which include a
death gratuity, $100,000 of life insurance, a housing allowance paid
for a year, paid in a lump sum, as well as burial and other related
expenses.
Yesterday I asked unanimous consent that we take up and pass the
House bill. The majority leader and I entered into a conversation, and
there was a question as to the intervening action by the Department of
Defense to try to work around the lapse of the funding. Fisher House,
which is a wonderful charitable organization, helps to operate and fund
seven different facilities in my State alone. I know they are
extraordinarily generous and do very good work. They offered to enter
into a contractual agreement with the Department of Defense to fill the
gap during the interim. But what I would like to do is ask unanimous
consent that we take up and pass the House legislation, which would
alleviate the need for Fisher House and the Department of Defense
trying to figure a workaround. We would actually pass legislation that
would reopen that stream of funding so that these families could get
the benefits they deserve.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--H.J. Res. 91
Mr. CORNYN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to
consideration of Calendar No. 216, H.J. Res 91, making continuing
appropriations for death gratuities and related survivor benefits for
survivors of deceased military servicemembers of the Department of
Defense for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes; that the measure
be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Reserving the right to object, the senior Senator from
Texas has always been very courteous to me. Yesterday was no exception
in withholding his unanimous consent request when we discussed this
issue. It was about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, as he indicated.
I indicated that I thought that if we waited until 3:30 we would have
this matter revolved, as that is what I had been told. In fact, it was
a little after 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon that Secretary Hagel
issued a statement announcing that the Department of Defense had
entered into an agreement, as my friend said, with the organization my
friend mentioned, and that would provide the family of fallen
servicemembers--over the weekend, the Senator from Texas is correct, we
had five soldiers killed, one of whom was a woman, four men and one
woman. The agreement Senator Hagel came up with would give everyone--
provide to family members of the military the full set of benefits they
have been promised, including the $100,000 death benefit gratuity. So
the death benefit issue has been resolved. The Department of Defense
stepped forward and took care of everything, so this issue is largely
moot. It is clear the action on this legislation is now just for show
here.
We all agree it is bad that the government shutdown led to this added
grief for the families who had suffered such a terrible loss. Now we
need to do what we can to prevent any further bad results--and there
have been plenty of them in other areas. The right thing to do is to
prevent more of these in other areas, and the House should just vote to
open the government. This issue has been taken care of, and it is
terrible that we even got to this point.
We should not forget that as long as the government remains closed
and the Republicans refuse to open the government, the military is
unable to, for example, buy armor and equipment needed to prevent
future deaths in the military. For the families of FBI agents killed in
the line of duty, it is the same problem--they can't receive their
death benefits. Veterans' benefits are delayed and disrupted.
As for this bill, the Secretary has now acted. We all agree the issue
is taken care of. If my friend from Texas feels more comfort as a
result of doing this, which I think is unnecessary, I don't object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The joint resolution (H.J. Res. 91) was ordered to be engrossed for a
third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, if I could respond briefly, I appreciate
the majority leader not objecting to the consideration of this
legislation. He believes this issue has been resolved by this
contractual arrangement between Fisher House and the Department of
Defense, but ultimately the Department of Defense would have to
reimburse Fisher House under what I understand is the purported
arrangement to be made. This obviates the need for any of that kind of
workaround, together with any legal questions that might arise as to
whether this is actually something the Department has the authority to
do. I am not suggesting they don't; I am just saying this alleviates
all those considerations.
So I am pleased we were able to come together in a bipartisan way, as
we were on the military pay for uniformed military, and pass this
narrow piece of legislation. I think maybe now that we have passed the
pay for Active-Duty
[[Page S7369]]
military and we have passed the provision that provides for survivor
benefits for the families of the fallen, perhaps that paves the way to
be open for some other narrow bills until we can come together on a
larger bill.
We have offered, for example, funding for the National Institutes of
Health, NIH. A few days ago the distinguished assistant leader from the
Democratic side gave a very eloquent speech about children's cancer
research. Under the bill that was passed by the House on a bipartisan
basis that we have called up here, that funding would be restored, as
would funding for the Veterans' Administration so they can process
disability benefits, which they are not able to do now because of the
cutoff in funding.
There are a number of areas where I think we can work together
constructively if we will do so. I am pleased we were able to take care
of this one.
Mr. DURBIN. Would the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. CORNYN. I yield for a question.
Mr. DURBIN. I would ask a question through the Chair.
I say through the Chair, I think what we did here was the right thing
to do, and I am sorry, I am painfully sorry that this government
shutdown is hurting so many innocent people. It could come to an end
with one decision by the Speaker to call one bill on the floor of the
House. He refuses to do so. So we are trying to put out these little
fires and spare the American people the pain and injustice that is
coming about as a result of this shutdown. But I would say to the
Senator from Texas that even the Veterans' Administration bill passed
by the House fails to fund some critical areas for veterans. It does
not fund the appeals process for veterans disability claims. Those have
stopped. Secondly, it doesn't fund the cemetery rights of veterans who
are seeking to be buried in national cemeteries. While we pay for
funerals, the people who prepare the grave sites and such are not being
paid. It doesn't have the Department of Labor program to hire
unemployed veterans coming home. That is not funded. The HUD program
for homeless veterans is not being funded. The notion that we are
somehow taking care of veterans with the House action is far from true.
The last point I wish to make is that over 500,000 Federal employees
are actually veterans. Many of them are furloughed today. One-fourth of
all employee veterans are disabled. Many of them are furloughed today.
If we really care about veterans, opening the government to make sure
all of these agencies are serving our veterans seems to me to be a
reasonable approach. I ask if the Senator agrees.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, responding to the question of the
distinguished assistant majority leader, I would say that we would all
like to try to find some way to get back to business as usual when it
comes to funding the government through the regular appropriations
process. We haven't done that for a long time, and so we have been
operating not on individual bills--I think there are 13 separate bills
as part of the appropriations process. So now we have unfortunately
already degenerated to this continuing resolution process, which has
its own problems.
I would say to my friend that for every one of the hardships we can
mitigate through passing narrow legislation absent a global agreement
on the continuing resolution, it seems to me we ought to be doing that.
If there are other suggestions the Democratic side has about how we can
do that, I think that would be a good thing to do.
The problem is that I know the majority leader--I will give the
majority leader the benefit of the doubt. I hope he didn't really mean
he thought this was a show process, trying to restore these survivor
benefits through this unanimous consent request, and I will give him
the benefit of the doubt.
I do think there are a lot of questions raised in the minds of the
American people whether what is happening here is being done purely for
political purposes. We have veterans of World War II and Korea who come
to the World War II Memorial only to be met with barricades. I have met
a number of the Honor Flights of the ``greatest generation'' at a
number of these memorials, and they have basically decided to go around
the barricades, as I believe is their right under the Constitution.
It seems as if there is an effort made to maximize the pain
associated with the shutdown. We know 83 percent of the government is
being funded. Why can't we try to chip away at some of these narrow
provisions and mitigate some of the hardship that we can rather than
getting in our corners, squaring off, and creating more and more
problems? I think this is important. We ought to be doing this. We
should have done this a long time ago.
I would say to my colleagues, there were reports that Secretary Hagel
notified the administration of this lapse in survivor benefits before
the shutdown even occurred. It took the President 9 days before he
finally ordered the Department of Defense to come up with a workaround,
thankfully with the help of the Fisher House.
I think there is an impression that a lot of gamesmanship is going
on. I don't think it becomes the Senate. I think Congress's approval
rating is in the toilet, and we ought to be doing everything we can to
address the problems where we can.
Mr. DURBIN. Would Senator yield for a question?
Mr. CORNYN. I yield the floor to the Senator.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant majority leader.
Mr. DURBIN. I would make several points.
First, I was with an Honor Flight group at the World War II Memorial
last week, a great bunch of World War II veterans who came in from
Illinois, and it didn't surprise me one bit--there was no barricade
stopping these veterans. They were on their way to their memorial, and
they went.
The reason why there was any question about this memorial and access
was because of the decision by the Republicans to shut down the
government.
I was going to remind the Senator of Texas, who is a learned attorney
and a former Texas Supreme Court justice, of the story we were told in
law school. It was an anecdotal story, an apocryphal story of someone
who killed both his parents, went to the courtroom, and then threw
himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan. In this
situation we have our Republican friends lamenting the impact of a
government shutdown on World War II veterans coming to Washington, and
on these tragic stories of families who have lost someone they love in
combat. But all of this is unnecessary. All of it could have been
avoided if the Republican Speaker of the House would call one bill for
a vote which he knows will pass. It would open the government. That is
the simple and honest answer.
This notion we are going to have a series of small appropriations to
fund our government--all of the appropriations bills that have been
called so far and passed the House amount to about 18 percent of the
discretionary domestic budget. At this pace, the House only has to pass
79 more bills to open our government. We think at this pace it will
only take them about 2\1/2\ months to do it. Is that any way to run a
great Nation? It isn't.
We need to open our government, serve our people, spare them the
injustice and pain which comes from this Republican shutdown.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Madam President, my friend, the distinguished senior
Senator from Illinois, gave an analogy that applies to a lot of what my
friend from Texas said. First of all, we haven't done appropriations
bills. We haven't done appropriations bills because the Republicans
won't let us. We can't even get cloture on a way to proceed to one of
them.
But I want to be sure the record is clear that my friend from Texas
doesn't have to give me the benefit of the doubt on what I said. If
there were ever an example of this whole process being for show, it is
this: We have a lot of things we should be working on. The country is
within 1 week of defaulting on its debt for the first time in the
history of this country. We should be focusing on that. The government
should be open.
We had the unfortunate incident where we had five of our troops
killed over the weekend in Afghanistan, and it brought to our attention
they were not going to get their benefits because the part of the
government that gives them that money is closed.
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Now, we didn't close it. But Secretary Hagel, a former Republican
Member of this body, worked it out so they are all taken care of. They
are all taken care of. So this unanimous consent I agreed to is for
show. It doesn't mean anything. They are being taken care of anyway.
So I appreciate the Senator giving me the benefit of the doubt, but
he doesn't need to give me the benefit of the doubt. This whole thing
is for show. This whole government shutdown is for show. It is a show
that I don't quite understand the ending of, but that is where we are.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, may I inquire, under the previous order,
how much time remains for the minority?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 8\1/2\ minutes remaining for the
Republicans.
Mr. RUBIO. I ask unanimous consent that 5 minutes be added to that
total, for a total of 13 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, with all this focus on the fighting going
on in Washington these days, I think we are losing focus on the biggest
issue facing this country, and that is the pervasive and growing sense
we are losing control of our country; that we are losing the American
dream.
Why do people feel this way? Because millions of them have been out
of a job for months, and maybe even years, and because millions more
find themselves stuck with jobs that don't pay enough for them to live
on or certainly for them to live as they used to.
When people hear news that the economy is recovering, that
unemployment is down by .1 percent this week or this month, that the
stock market is up and that the recession is over, it makes people
angry. And rightfully so. Because the recession might be over on Wall
Street, but it is not over for millions of people who are out of work
or stuck with jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
What makes all this worse is that while their paychecks aren't
growing, their bills are growing. Ask the young couples out there, the
single parents, how much it is costing them every month or week to
provide childcare for their kids. Ask the young Americans who are
saddled with thousands of dollars in student loan debt.
How are people making it through these times? Well, I am reminded of
a few years after we got married, when my wife and I hit a rough patch
in our finances. What we did was we got rid of one of the cars and we
moved in with her mom for 6 months. That is what many of us have had to
do at some stage in our life, but it was usually temporary. Now people
are doing that with the feeling it might not be temporary; that this
might be the way it is for a while. And they ask themselves: Is this
the new normal? Is this the way it is going to be from now on?
This is what millions of people across this country are feeling these
days; that maybe the American dream--if you work hard, you can improve
your life--isn't what it used to be; that maybe the American dream is
actually even slipping away.
But why is this happening? Whose fault is this, is the normal
reaction some people have. Well, there are a few reasons why this is
happening. One is the economy has changed. The nature of our economy
has changed. Globalization, for example, has sent thousands of middle-
class jobs overseas. Information technology and advances have replaced
many of our middle-class jobs with machines. Another reason why is that
we simply have too many people who never get the education or the
skills they need for the better paying jobs this new economy is
creating. And we can't ignore, for example, the breakdown of our
culture and our families and what that is doing. It is trapping people
in a cycle of poverty and of dependence. These are all contributors to
what we face today.
But one of the major reasons why this is happening, why so many
people are trapped in dead-end jobs, why so many people have been
unemployed for so long, is because our economy is not creating enough
jobs to live off of. One of the reasons why that is happening is
because our country is headed for a debt crisis. The real debt crisis
is not the looming debt limit. The real debt crisis is that every year
our government is spending more money than it takes in. And, by the
way, one day we are not going to have to worry about raising the debt
limit because no one will want to lend us money anyway.
Too often around here we talk about the national debt as if it is
simply an accounting problem. The national debt is a lot more than
that. How does the economy create good jobs? It creates good jobs in
two ways: No. 1 is through innovation--when people invent a new product
or service. The other is through investment--when people risk the money
they have to start a new business or when a business reinvests its
profits into the business to grow. The fact we are headed for a debt
crisis and that we have no serious long-term plan in place to address
it is discouraging innovation and that is discouraging investment.
Who wants to innovate in an economy that is headed for a debt crisis?
Who wants to risk their money to start a new business in an economy
that is headed for a catastrophic disruption? And who wants to reinvest
their profits to grow their business in a country where the government
is going bankrupt?
Having people trapped in low-wage jobs, having people unemployed for
months or years at a time, having people unable to afford to get
married or start a family doesn't have to be the new normal. It doesn't
have to be this way forever. We can turn this around. But to do so we
have to stop chasing all these temporary gimmicks that promise us some
sort of momentary boost to our economy. We have to stop ignoring the
problems headed full speed at us. We have to return to the basics--to
the basics that made us such a prosperous nation.
Our national debt today stands at close to $17 trillion. In the last
5\1/2\ years alone it has grown by over $6 trillion. So when you hear
the President or the Democrats here in the Senate say they want us to
pass what they call a clean debt limit increase, here is what they are
really asking for: They are asking us to borrow another $1 trillion but
not do anything meaningful to slow the growth of that debt.
Why would we continue to do this? When are we finally going to get
serious around here about putting in place a serious long-term plan to
bring this debt under control? In order to do that, the first thing we
have to understand is what is causing this debt.
Look, we have a broken Tax Code. It is full of all sorts of special-
interest loopholes. But the reason why we have this massive debt isn't
because rich people aren't paying enough in taxes. Even if we taxed
every millionaire every penny they made this year, it wouldn't make
even a small dent in the debt. Yes there is some serious waste going on
throughout our government. For example, we have to reverse the changes
the Obama administration has made to these welfare programs that
basically gut the work requirement and leave people dependent on
government. We need to reform the way we give foreign aid. We must and
should do all of these and even more. But even if we did all that, it
is still not enough.
What is driving our debt is the way we spend money on two very
important programs: Medicare and Social Security. They are spending
more money than they take in, and that gap is growing rapidly every
single year.
I warn you, anytime anyone talks about making changes to these
programs, you get accused of trying to hurt the elderly. So speaking
for myself personally, let me set the record straight. I come from a
State with millions of people--millions of retirees--who depend on
these programs, and one of them is my own mother. She worked hard for
her entire life and paid into these programs so they would be there for
her when she retired. I would never support any changes to these
programs that would hurt my mother. But these programs are going
bankrupt, and anyone who is in favor of doing nothing about them is in
favor of bankrupting them.
The good news is this: The good news is we still have some time to
save Medicare and Social Security, and we still have time to do these
changes without making any changes to the benefits of seniors such as
my mom. But to do so is going to require younger workers, like myself,
to accept that
[[Page S7371]]
when we retire, our Medicare and our Social Security is going to be
different than our parents.
So instead of spending all of our time around here trying to figure
out how to raise the debt limit, we need to spend more of our time
trying to figure out what we can do to put in place a serious long-term
plan to bring this debt under control so that our economy can start
creating more of those good-paying, middle-class jobs, so that people
can start building for themselves the better future they always dreamed
of.
The American dream is under assault. That is the real crisis. When
are we going to get serious about solving it? This dream of earning a
better life is the universal hope of people everywhere. But we are
reminded that for much of human history most people found themselves
trapped by the circumstances of their birth. That meant no matter how
hard they worked, no matter how talented they were, they were only
going to go as far as their family went. They could only do whatever it
was their parents did. One of the things that made America so special
is that here that has been different. Here, through hard work and
sacrifice, people from all walks of life, from every corner of the
world, have had the real opportunity to earn for themselves a better
life.
This is what we call the American dream. As Americans, that is our
identity. It is what holds us together as a nation. It is what holds us
together as a people, and it is what has made us exceptional.
I know people are discouraged about how tough times are. I know some
people are very disappointed about how the last election turned out. I
know many people are angry and, quite frankly, disgusted by the way
this process is working or failing to work these days. But no matter
how bad things may seem, we cannot give up on America and we cannot
give up on the American dream. We have to do everything we can to make
sure this country remains a place where anyone from anywhere can
accomplish anything.
So despite how ugly Washington looks right now, I actually remain
confident that, in the end, that is exactly what we are going to do. I
have no doubt that, in the end, our children will grow up to be the
most prosperous generation that ever lived. Despite all the challenges
we face right now, when all is said and done, I believe with all my
heart we will still go down in history as the generation that saved the
American dream and left our children what our parents left for us--the
single greatest Nation in the history of the world.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON. Madam President, mindful of the hour and that the Senate
is about to recess, I want to say to my colleague from Florida, who is
my friend, that I have optimism and I have faith in our country as
well.
I think it is interesting that the stock market, the Dow Jones, has
surged 243 points--I just checked it a couple of minutes ago--on just
the rumors that the debt ceiling will be lifted and we will not go
through this crisis. But I am told at the other end of the Capitol, the
House of Representatives is going to have difficulty in getting any
agreement to stop the shutdown of the government and pass a continuing
appropriations bill. So here we are, back in the soup again.
If we do just a short-term debt extension, lifting the debt ceiling,
then for however long it is--5, 6 weeks--come Thanksgiving we are going
to be back in the soup again.
There has got to be a change in attitude, and the attitude has got to
be I respect the other fellow's point of view, I respect his difference
of opinion, now let's work it out together. And it is only then we are
going to solve this problem.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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