[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 144 (Sunday, October 13, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7433-S7454]
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 ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Schedule
Mr. REID. We have some speakers throughout the day's session with
Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. We will have
more information at a subsequent time how late we will be in.
Yesterday Republicans voted to stop the Senate from even debating
legislation to avert a catastrophic default of the Nation's debt. They
stopped this body from even discussing the single most important issue
facing this Nation: the loss of the full faith and credit of our
country.
They did so under the pretext that refusing to pay the country's
bills would somehow make those bills disappear. No one denies that this
Nation has work to do to reduce this debt. But Republicans who say this
country should default on its debt today are the same Republicans who
ran up the debt only a few short years ago. These same Republicans
charged more than $4 trillion in tax breaks for the rich on the
American taxpayers' credit card. They paid for two wars costing about
$2 trillion with borrowed money, and they rang up a $400 million tab
for a Medicare prescription drug plan. They ran up the Nation's credit
card for years and years on many things.
There was one conversation on one of the Sunday shows today that said
we were trying to break the caps set in the Budget Control Act. We know
that on January 15, the second year of sequestration, we voted
differently than that. We voted to extend the CR until November 15, not
a word about breaking the caps. We are happy to go forward with the CR,
as we have already voted for in this body. Any talk about breaking caps
is not anything that comes from us. Yet every single Republican
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refused yesterday to even talk about paying the bill now that is due.
The Presiding Officer and everyone in this body knows--and I think
the American people know--that I met yesterday with Senator McConnell.
We are in a conversation today. I am confident the Republicans will
allow the government to open and extend the ability of this country to
pay its bills. I am going to do everything I can throughout the day to
accomplish just this. It is important we do this, and we must do this.
It is the height of hypocrisy to not pay our bills.
Americans want Congress to compromise. They want Congress to give
economic certainty and security, not more indecision and doubt.
Americans want Congress to do its job. That is all they are asking us
to do.
Americans want Congress to reopen the government, take the threat of
default off the table, and sit down and talk about a long-term budget
deal that creates jobs and strengthens the middle class.
I am confident and hopeful that will be accomplished.
Reservation of Leader Time
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
leadership time is reserved. Under the previous order, Senators are
permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
The majority whip is recognized.
Mr. DURBIN. I wish to thank the majority leader for his statement.
We are hoping there will be positive developments today, and very
quickly, relative to the impasse which we have reached. It is time to
reopen this government, it is time to make certain we pay our bills,
and then let us engage in honest debate on the issues that are before
us, and there are many.
The forum for that debate is very obvious: It is the budget
conference, the conference between the two budget committees. The
Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Senator Patty Murray of Washington,
passed the floor of the Senate 6 months ago. Senator Murray and others
on our side have tried on 21 separate occasions to ask for unanimous
consent to go to this budget conference committee to start debating the
issues which we now see in the press every day. Twenty-one separate
times the Republicans have objected to even meeting. This is
unfortunate and it is one of the reasons we are here today.
It is hard to believe, if one is in the midst of this maelstrom, that
not even 2 weeks have passed since we started this debate on the floor
of the Senate, which has led to this terrible situation.
Two weeks ago our government was open. There was good thinking--or at
least a good hope--that we were going to extend the debt ceiling of the
United States. Now we are in a much different place. We are only 2 days
away from the second week ending of a full government shutdown, a
government shutdown which has furloughed some 800,000 employees. That
is an unfortunate situation for these employees and their families and
for the American people as well.
What the House Republicans have learned, and those Senate Republicans
supporting them, is that this government shutdown has real-world
consequences. I can remember taking my kids to Chuck E. Cheese's and
watching this Whac-A-Mole game where something would pop up and you hit
it with a hammer. This is what the House Republicans have been doing on
a daily basis. If a story comes out that suggests people are being
denied critical medical care at the National Institutes of Health, they
say: We will open that part of the government. If a story comes out,
tragic stories, that families who have lost a loved one in service to
this country are not receiving benefits they are entitled to, they will
pass am exception to the budget. It is the same thing with the VA and
FEMA. It is no way to run a government, and it is unfair to the
American people.
Their strategy, as convoluted as it is, is they will pass these bills
one at a time to fund our government until it gets down to a handful of
bills for agencies they don't care for. One of the agencies the
rightwing spokespeople have identified they want to close down is the
Environmental Protection Agency. They want to close down the
Environmental Protection Agency. It is an outrageous statement.
They may disagree with the policy of that agency--I disagree with
some myself--but when it comes down to its important mission to make
sure we have safe drinking water and air that is not going to create
public health hazards, I hope it is something that most people,
regardless of their political background, would agree is an important
government function.
This strategy of a piecemeal appropriation has resulted in an
embarrassing predicament for our government. People laid off cannot go
to work and basic services cannot be provided.
The other day a Republican Senator came to the floor and said: Let us
at least agree that we should open FEMA, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
Natural disasters do occur, and so he made a motion to open that
agency. I asked him: Wouldn't you want to also open the weather service
to make sure they are fully staffed to warn people before a disaster
occurs? Wouldn't you also want to make sure the agencies that arrive on
the scene of disasters, such as the Small Business Administration, that
try to get businesses back in place, should also be reopened? Shouldn't
the Coast Guard be fully funded to make sure if there is need for
rescue, they are present?
He reflected on it and said: Yes, let's include all of those.
This is the problem with picking and choosing agencies, they are
going to miss something critically important. That is what we face.
Secondly, on this debt ceiling, as awful as it is to face a shutdown
in the government, for the United States to default on its debt for the
first time in history would be catastrophic. That isn't my word. It is
a word given to us by the Business Roundtable. The leaders of the major
businesses in the United States have said if we default on our debt for
the first time, it will be catastrophic.
October 17, Thursday, is the day. If we haven't taken action by then,
we risk default.
Yesterday we tried to pass what we call a clean extension of the debt
ceiling with no political strings attached--just extend it until the
end of next year. All we asked our Republican colleagues to do was to
allow us to bring the measure to the floor for debate, for amendment.
Not one single Republican Senator, not one, would vote to allow us to
even proceed to the bill so that we could start the debate and in a
timely way to respond to this challenge of the expiration of our debt
ceiling Wednesday night.
If we listen to the business leaders across America, they will tell
you there is a lot at stake. This is not only another political issue.
Since World War II, the United States has worked, effectively worked,
to make the United States dollar the soundest currency in the world.
Think about that. That U.S. dollar is the investment of choice of
governments all around the world. They believe the safest place to be
is in U.S. Treasuries. Why? Because the United States always pays its
debts, period.
Now House Republicans and other Republicans have said maybe we won't
pay all our debts; maybe we will go into something called
prioritization; pick and choose the debts you want to pay. Many of us
tried that when we were young and in college. It catches up with you.
After a while, we find out we just can't do that.
Now put yourself in the position of a great nation, a nation that has
to make 50 million to 80 million decisions a month as to how to pay the
debts that are owed by the U.S. Government. How do we prioritize that?
Republicans, many of them argue we will first start by paying our
largest creditors. In other words, pay China first. How soon then will
we pay Social Security recipients, those waiting for veterans checks,
those in our military waiting for paychecks, those who are owed money
from our government, and the transfers to States and localities that
are critical for the ongoing operations of their own government and
their own credit rating? It is a ridiculous idea.
It reminds me of Soviet revisionism when it comes to history. They
talk about how simple it will be to prioritize and default on our debt.
It will not. It will be disastrous. The flat-Earth economists who are
preaching this don't have a leg to stand on. Economists and business
leaders, many of whom are conservative Republicans, have warned the
Republicans: Don't do
[[Page S7435]]
this. This is something that will cause damage for a long time to come.
In the threat of default in 2012, interest rates on 4-week Treasury
bills tripled. They are at the highest levels since 2008. Fidelity
Investments, the largest U.S. money market mutual fund, liquidated all
of their short-term Treasury bills just on the threat of default on our
debt.
Is this default or is this debt ceiling extension something
extraordinary? The honest answer is no. We have done it so routinely
that most people haven't noticed. Congress has increased the debt
ceiling 78 times since 1960, 49 times under Republican Presidents and
29 times under Democrats. The debt was increased by 189 percent under
President Ronald Reagan--a 189-percent increase in the debt--compared
to a little over 40 percent under President Obama. Debt ceiling
increases have often been paired with other issues, but only recently
has the threat of default been used as a bargaining chip.
I know if we fail to extend this debt ceiling it will be
catastrophic. A lot of people will suffer. I think about families,
working families, with their savings accounts, perhaps their retirement
accounts. Imagine, if you will, what it means to them to lose 5 or 10
percent of the value of their savings. They work hard, many of them
barely scraping by, just getting by paycheck to paycheck, putting a
little money away for the future. Now, because of political
gamesmanship on Capitol Hill, their hard-earned savings are at stake.
That is the height of irresponsibility. That is the height of
recklessness.
The fact that we couldn't get one Republican vote yesterday to go
forward is as troubling as anything that has happened on the floor of
the Senate that I can remember. This is something we should all agree
on--to move forward. I am hopeful these discussions between Senator
Reid, the Democratic majority leader, and Senator McConnell, the
Republican leader, will bear fruit. I hope they can find a sensible
common ground to spare us what we face. I hope we can end this
government shutdown, pay our bills, and then engage in a meaningful,
regular order and honest debate in our budget conference over the many
other issues that challenge us as a Nation. That is what we were
elected to do. That is what we must do.
There are those who are arguing we need to continue this
confrontation and take it to a high-noon scenario. Frankly, that is not
very courageous on their part. It is pretty easy to be politically
courageous with other people's money, and that is what is happening
with those Republicans who are arguing we should default on our
national debt. They are playing with the savings of working families
across America. That isn't fair to those families. We should stand by
them, push for economic growth, for the creation of jobs, and not what
this would do--damage this Nation's recovery.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, over the last few days there has been a
lot of talk about negotiating, and there has been a lot of negotiating.
That is good. Various Senators in small and large groups have been
talking about how long a continuing resolution should be in effect, how
much to extend the debt limit, among other issues, and surely it is
important that negotiations take place. We Democrats have tried over 20
times now to move to a House-Senate conference so that we can discuss
and negotiate our differences on a budget resolution. Regrettably,
Republicans have refused to allow those negotiations to occur.
The underlying issue is this: While negotiations are underway, our
government should be open and serving the American people. Democrats
believe government should be functioning during negotiations. For that
matter, we believe, because government performs important duties, it
should always be open and functioning. While those negotiations are
underway, we surely should not have the threat of a global economic
meltdown hanging over our Nation.
The American people don't want the government to be shut down or for
the United States to default on its obligations while negotiations take
place--or at any other time, for that matter. No one knows how long the
negotiations will take. In the meantime there are real hardships being
imposed on the American people because of the shutdown. Vital public
services are being impaired across all of government: Nutrition
assistance for women and children, Head Start programs for school
children, research grants at the National Science Foundation, badly
needed repairs to our highways and bridges, among hundreds of other
programs.
I think all of us agree that negotiations are more than desirable;
they are essential. But the issue looming before us is not that. It is
whether the government will be open and the threat of default will be
lifted while we negotiate. Negotiations could last a while, so they
should take place while the government is functioning. It is
unconscionable that Americans are denied services and benefits while we
negotiate.
It is also unacceptable that negotiations take place when one side
has placed a bomb on the negotiating table and set the timer. Let me
put it this way: If in the future I came to my Republican colleagues
and said: As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I am not
going to allow the Defense bill to come out of the committee until the
Senate raises taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans--something
I very much favor--what would be the result? They would reject my
ultimatum, and rightly so. Threats to do immense damage unless I get my
way on an issue is plainly the wrong way to legislate and to get things
done. Such threats just push people to dig in deeper on their
positions.
The shutdown of our government is doing tremendous damage. We know
the American people have suffered great harm because of the government
shutdown, and we know the impact on our economy and the world economy
would be severe if we default on our debt. Who in this Congress
believes the government should remain closed while we negotiate? Who in
this Congress believes the government should remain closed while we
negotiate? Who in this Congress believes a default on our obligations
is not damaging? Surely no more than a handful among us.
Cutting through all the fog and cutting through the talk of the
talking heads is this point, which I believe is unassailable. There are
a lot of differences in negotiations. People have different positions
on different issues. But I believe this is an unassailable and
undebatable point: The vast majority of the American people believe
that while negotiations are going on, the government should be
functioning and that we should not default on our obligations.
Sitting down together and discussing the many issues that our Nation
faces is essential, but it is also essential we do so while the
government is open and functioning and serving the American people.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I appreciate all of the speeches being
given, and all of them have a seed of possibility. But evidently we are
not going to water them or try to grow them. We are just going to talk
about possibilities.
There is enough blame to go around. It isn't just on one side. But I
would like to remind people of why we are here, hoping that we won't be
here again. The reason we are here is we didn't do the appropriations
bills the way we are supposed to.
I know we had a budget process, and the budget process got bogged
down between the House and the Senate. But obviously we have gotten
past that problem, because I noticed on the calendar we have a whole
bunch of appropriations bills--I think, actually, all 12 of them that
we are supposed to pass--and the first one went on the calendar on June
27. Obviously they didn't feel constrained by not having a budget that
was agreed to by the House and the Senate. They set some parameters and
came up with bills. So we are past that budget argument that there was
no conference committee. I thought there should be a conference
committee, but there wasn't a conference committee.
While we are talking about conference committees, I have to mention
the last offer from the House we voted
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on in regard to this shutdown was a request by the House to have a
conference committee--a conference committee made up of the Senate and
House--to work out these problems before the shutdown went on this
long. The Democrats voted against that unanimously. It seems to me if
they want a conference committee on a budget that was supposed to be
done by April 15, but that we have bypassed and done the appropriations
for already, that is kind of a weak argument for saying now that there
shouldn't be a conference regarding all of these issues that are coming
up right now.
I don't know how you get this resolved without getting the two sides
talking. Neither side can solve the problem in the Senate without some
help from the other side. It will take 60 votes, and that means neither
side has the clear majority that is necessary to pass it.
The cloture vote we voted on yesterday was to fix the credit cards of
the Federal Government indefinitely, with no limits for another year,
through 2014. That amounts to $1.1 trillion of estimated additional
debt for the country, for our kids and our grandkids. I used to talk a
lot about our grandkids, then I moved it up to our kids, and now I am
talking about us. We are finally the ones at risk. That should
certainly make all of the seniors interested.
We went to the White House the other day, and the President did a
marvelous job of going through a speech and then taking questions and
giving answers. But I was very disappointed at the end because the end
speech was give me what I want for the shutdown and government; give me
what I want for the debt limit increase, and then we can talk. The
reason we are talking is because we have a government shutdown and we
have this looming debt ceiling problem. There ought to be other ways we
can talk, but we don't. So like I said, there is plenty of blame to go
around.
This comment about we shouldn't do it piecemeal, that is a reference
to the different measures the House has sent over in regard to problems
the Senate said we were having--problems that people immediately
recognized. Yet none of those have been voted on. None of them have
been voted on. Maybe they weren't that much of a crisis. I think we all
agreed they were that much of a crisis, but the answer is: Let's not do
it piecemeal.
Do you know why the appropriations process has 12 separate budgets,
12 separate spending bills? It is so we do it piecemeal, so we can look
at them with some depth and maybe get some clarity out of the spending
we are doing. When we wind up doing an omnibus bill--and that is where
we are headed, where everything will be grouped into one, and it will
be passed for the rest of the year--we won't get to look at any of the
details. We won't get to offer any amendments to it, and we won't get
to say what is effective and what isn't. We will just keep doing what
we have been doing, which is running up the national debt. But we can't
afford to keep doing that.
I talked about the national parks being a problem. I specifically
talked about the national parks that are revenue producers and how we
shouldn't shut down the businesses that produce the revenue. Well, I
think in response to that, the States were allowed to take over
national parks, but at their own expense and not from the revenue that
would be generated by the park. That creates some complications for
Yellowstone park, because Yellowstone park is shared by three States.
They did that specifically so Wyoming couldn't claim that Yellowstone
was Wyoming's national park. So a little goes into Montana, and a
little goes into Idaho. So that would require a joint agreement by the
three States on exactly how that would work, and I am hoping those
three States are working out a plan for that if this ever happens
again.
That is one of the things government ought to do, to look at what the
future possibilities are and say: No, we are never going to have a
shutdown or we are never going to have a debt ceiling crisis. We create
these crises. We create them by putting definite deadlines on things
and then everything crescendos up to that point. The people who are
then picked for the task force to deal with that crisis have a huge
media listening group, which is a disincentive, actually, to get it
solved before the deadline.
A few other problems that were mentioned that need to be solved: The
National Institutes of Health, armed forces who are on Active-Duty
training, veterans benefits--particularly veterans benefits for the
year--compensation for furloughed Federal employees, special nutrition
programs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Food and Drug
Administration, continuing appropriations for Head Start, and salaries
and related expenses for certain Federal employees.
Traditionally, when we have had a situation like this, when the
employees do come back to work, they get compensated for the time they
weren't there. Do you know what the people in my State think of that?
Why are we paying people for not working?
So if the principle behind that is to go ahead and approve their
salaries and expenses and get them back to work, that would take care
of most of the problems. But then the people wouldn't be feeling the
hurt out there, and if they don't feel the hurt, they don't know whom
to blame, and if they can blame one side or the other, that makes a
difference in elections.
That is not what this body is about. We should be about getting
things done in the regular order, following the right spending
process--which we don't do--and avoiding situations where we make it
hurt.
We have a sequester in effect. It is the first time the Federal
appropriations and the Federal spending have been cut probably since
the Korean war. It was a true cut, but it was a 2.3-percent cut. You
won't find anybody agreeing it is really 2.3 percent even though that
is what the law says, and that is because we didn't do our spending
process in the proper order. So we got through 8 months before the
sequester went into effect, and when it goes into effect with only 4
months left, the 2.3 percent of the whole year's spending has to be
taken out of the 4 months' worth of budget. That made it 5.3 percent.
I was visited by the Head Start folks of my State, and they showed me
what was going to happen if the sequester stayed in place. It was kind
of fascinating because they were cut 7.5 percent and are projected to
be cut 7.5 percent each year after this. If we did the appropriations,
the spending process, at the beginning of the year, it would be 2.3
percent, and we should anticipate that it is going to be done that way
for the future, so they should have been told to watch for 2.3 percent
cuts--5.3 for last year, for the 4 months they knew about it--although
we knew about it for a whole year in advance, just didn't imagine it
would ever happen.
So why 7.5 percent? Well, I have to believe, from other spending
information I have seen by the people from Wyoming coming to Washington
and telling me their dilemma, I think the Washington bureaucracy is
holding on to an overproportion of the money to keep their jobs in
place instead of out there where the kids are, and 7.5 percent when it
should be 5.3 percent tells me that they kept 2.2 percent for running
Washington. I don't think they think that is a very important part of
the spending process.
The papers have been covering a number of things that people have
been having trouble with. One of them is a fellow who went into the
rum-making business. You can do that legally, and there are certain
requirements you have to meet. Now he can't sell the rum. I thought,
well, sure, his formula hasn't been approved or there hasn't been an
inspection of the premises or something disastrous like that. No. He
can't do it because the FDA hasn't approved the labels. I didn't even
know we had a law that said Washington had to approve labels on
liquors. I know we used to have one for labels that had to go on
cigarettes, but even that didn't require Senate and House or
administrative or FDA approval; it just required it. But evidently, if
you are making rum, you have to have somebody approve your labels. I
didn't run into that before, and I questioned it.
But we don't have to be in this position. We could have the
government running, people could be paid, but we need to do it through
the regular process. We need to do 12 spending bills and do them over a
period of at least a week each and have amendments to them. There isn't
an appropriator who
[[Page S7437]]
is the ultimate answer for any spending bill. There isn't even a
committee that is the ultimate answer for each spending bill. The
reason we have 100 people here and 435 people over there is so that we
have 535 opinions on what could be unintended consequences or what is
or what isn't important, and if they are denied the right to
amendments, they are being denied the right to a voice for their
constituents. It is not for us; it is for our constituents. That is why
amendments are important.
We have had important bills come up here, and we worked on them for
maybe 3 weeks with no votes on amendments while they tried to negotiate
for a limited number of amendments.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Hawaii.
Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, my colleague, our good friend from
Wyoming, has talked about the need to get back to regular order so we
can discuss our funding priorities. The fact is, of course, we agree.
And the regular order would be to go to conference on the budget the
Senate passed way back in March. On a regular basis the Democrats in
the Senate have requested unanimous consent to go to conference on that
budget. In fact, only a few days ago we put in our 21st request for
unanimous consent to go to conference on our budget so we can go to
regular order and discuss and debate the priorities that are so
important to all of us. Every single time, a Republican Senator has
objected to that request.
Like so many of my Democratic colleagues have been doing, I come to
the floor again today to discuss the urgent need to end the shutdown
and raise the debt ceiling. There can no longer be any doubt that the
shutdown is hurting hundreds of thousands of families and businesses
throughout our country. I and many of my colleagues have told the
stories of these families and businesses and will continue to do so.
This shutdown hurts real people in real places all across our country.
Keeping the government running should not be a partisan battle. Yet
the Republicans who caused the shutdown in the first place seem to
think they would be doing Democrats a favor by reopening the government
so that people can get back to work, get paid, and pay their bills. The
idea that Congress should simply do its job isn't a favor to Democrats;
it is our responsibility to the American people.
The idea that stopping Congress from doing its job is somehow a
valuable bargaining chip is incomprehensible to most people. Since the
beginning of the shutdown driven by an extreme faction of the
Republican Party, people of all walks of life in Hawaii have contacted
me. They have shared stories about the impact of the shutdown on their
businesses, their families, and their communities.
I talked about the toll of the shutdown on our Federal employees. I
have shared stories from small businesses impacted by the closure of
our national parks and other attractions. I have also been in contact
with Hawaii's business community, our military, our State and local
governments, and others. Today I would like to share some more shutdown
stories and also underscore that allowing the United States to default
on paying its bills would only serve to make things much worse.
One woman wrote to me:
My husband and I are both Federal employees with the Forest
Service. We both work in wildland fire. I am currently
furloughed and he is working, but of course neither of us
will receive a paycheck. We have three children ages 5, 3,
and 1. My current day care costs are $2,300 a month. I can't
stop paying for day care, because all require a 2-4 week
notice and I would lose our spot for when I do go back to
work. We have savings, but the money is what we have saved
for things like Christmas and a special vacation together
since my husband was gone for several months this summer
fighting fires. This shutdown is extremely stressful for me
and I am very concerned that it is going to go on for several
weeks more.
The Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, representing over 1,000 Hawaii
businesses of all sizes, also sent me stories from some of their
members.
The president of one business wrote:
Sixty percent of our business is with the Department of
Defense. We move military household goods around the world as
they are restationed. As a direct result of the government
shutdown, we just had to lay off 41 of our 80 employees until
this is resolved and the government starts booking moves. We
informed the affected employees that all our staff will be
working reduced hours. We anticipate that each day of this
shutdown is costing the company over $18,000.
Another business owner wrote:
My business is working on opening a fourth location in
Aikahi Park Shopping Center. I was advised by our banker that
SBA loan approvals and execution may be held up due to this
debacle in D.C.
How is that helping to move our economy forward? If we ran
our business the way our leaders on Capitol Hill run our
country--well, the ``closed for business'' sign would not be
far behind.
These are stories about what is happening now as a result of the
shutdown.
If the United States were to fail to pay its bills, it would be much
worse. Interest rates would skyrocket, our capital markets could
freeze, and our Nation's borrowing costs over the long term would
require more of our Federal budget. In other words, a default would end
up costing our economy and consumers billions of dollars.
Our country has never defaulted before. The consequences of such a
default are so serious that everyone from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
to the National Association of Manufacturers has warned the Republicans
in particular to avoid such a catastrophe. Even the uncertainty of a
possible default is enough to hurt middle-class families and
businesses.
For example, after the last manufactured fiscal fiasco in 2011,
mortgage interest rates rose. If you were a family looking to refinance
or buy a new home, your mortgage would have cost you $100 per month
more after the United States nearly defaulted than it would have cost
before. That means $100 less for families across the country to spend
on groceries, gas, and other items. For most working people, $100 means
a lot. Imagine piling another $100 or more on the family with three
young children I mentioned earlier. We can't do that to them or other
families like them. Remember, in 2011 we didn't default. The
uncertainty alone caused mortgage interest rates to rise. It would have
been much worse if there had been a default. Yet here we are again.
It is incomprehensible that there are default deniers among my
colleagues who refuse to believe that default would be catastrophic for
all of us when we have the 2011 experience staring us in the face. A
default would be like an immediate tax on everything middle-class
families do. If interest rates explode, the cost of living in Hawaii
and everywhere else would rise. Student loan rates would go up. That
would reduce access to a quality education for many people. Credit
cards, car payments, mortgages--all of these would become more
expensive. The cost of doing business would go up. The cost of
borrowing money to start or keep businesses going would go up. There is
not a single good result that would come from our country defaulting on
paying its debts.
As I mentioned in the past few months, a government shutdown doesn't
give businesses a pause in meeting their commitments. They still have
to pay rent, maintain staff, and pay to keep the lights on. Imagine if
the cost of all of these suddenly went on and still nothing was coming
in. That is exactly where many businesses would find themselves if the
United States defaults.
In addition, with our economy still recovering from the economic
crisis of 2008, finally we have businesses contemplating growing, and
those plans will likely be put on hold or abandoned altogether. We
should be growing jobs, strengthening the middle class, and creating
opportunities for our families and businesses. A default crisis would
do exactly the opposite.
In day 12 of the shutdown and with the potential of default looming
on the horizon, it is way past time to give our families, businesses,
and communities certainty and security. We need to open the government
and avoid a totally manufactured catastrophe. Let's get on with it. I
am disappointed that our Republican colleagues yesterday failed to
support going forward to do just that. I ask them to reconsider their
position so that we can find a path that protects our families, our
communities, and our economy.
I yield the floor.
[[Page S7438]]
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I wish to follow up on the words of my
distinguished colleague from Hawaii and also comment on a few points
that the Senator from Wyoming Mr. Enzi made in this important debate
that is happening in Washington today--actually a debate that is
happening all over our country.
First, I wish to associate myself with the effort underway by Senator
Collins from Maine and Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota, Senator Pryor
from Arkansas, and others on both sides of the aisle who have been
working throughout the evening, the night, early morning hours--
talking, trying to find a way forward. I thank both Leader Reid and
Leader McConnell for blessing that effort and trying to find a way
forward because, as the Senator from Hawaii said, this is a very
dangerous situation.
Despite the fact that there are Members on the other side of the
Capitol in the Republican Party--not in the Democratic Party, in the
Republican Party--who continue to doubt that there will be any
ramifications from default, I hate to say it, but they are going to be
sorry they uttered those words. This is a very serious situation.
The U.S. Treasury bond is the safest investment in the world today.
Let me repeat, the safest investment in the world today. Think about
it. If you had a little bit of money, would you invest it in Russia?
Would you invest it in Saudi Arabia? Would you invest it in China?
Where would you invest it? The Government of the United States is not
perfect but, relatively speaking, in all aspects of the world what is
the safest, most sure group that is likely to pay their debts? That
would be the United States, and it has been that way for over 225
years.
But the Republicans in the House have decided to put that on the line
because they do not like the Affordable Care Act or they put all of
that on the line because they don't like the way the budget process is
working. They then doubled down and said not only are we going to put
the full faith and credit of the United States at risk, we are going to
shut down the government while we do that until we get our way on a
specific piece of legislation.
I know there are principles underlying the Affordable Care Act that
are worth debating how big the size of government should be, how much
the Federal Government should spend, how much local government should
spend, what level of revenues should be required to pay for it and who
should put up those revenues, individuals or businesses. Those are
important issues to decide. We try to make those decisions every day.
But a group of 80 Republicans--3 of whom are in my own State, I am
sorry to say, 3 Representatives--signed a letter saying: If we don't
get exactly what we want on the Affordable Care Act--which, by the way,
passed the Congress, was upheld by the Supreme Court, and is being
implemented in a majority of States--we are going to put the full faith
and credit of the United States at risk. Literally, the ramifications
are too massive to describe.
We have only a few days. I wouldn't even say we have a few days. We
are already feeling the results of this hostage-taking by a few
Republicans in the House of Representatives. I am praying and hoping
that my colleagues in the Senate will live up to the great hope of the
Senate, which was at times such as these to walk back from the ledge,
reason together and find a way forward.
I see my good friend from Tennessee. I think if there is anyone who
could help us do that, he would be one who could, along with Senator
McCain and Senator Graham and others who have been mayors, who have
been elected officials for a long time, who understand how you can get
wound up and that it is important to calmly wind down and figure this
out.
I will yield for a minute to the Senator if he has a question. But I
do want to say, because my argument is not with him, that when Senators
come to the floor to say that Democrats have not wanted to go along
with the regular process, I want to say again as an appropriator,
because I came to the floor yesterday, I want to say the first step in
an appropriations process is to get a budget.
The Democrats, amazingly, were able to get a budget. We have not for
4 years in the Senate. So we got a budget. Republicans got a budget.
These are two completely different approaches to how the government
should be funded, what should be spent, how much money should be
raised--two different approaches. But you know what. It is two
different parties. We have a Democrat Party controlling here, the
Republican Party controlling there. That is the first step, two
budgets. They are very different. We need to go to conference on that
budget.
But the Democrats here have asked our Republican colleagues who sit
right across the aisle, please let us go to the Budget Committee, 21
times. I have put this in the Record. We started on April 23, Senator
Reid requested unanimous consent; Senator Toomey from Pennsylvania
objected. I am not going to read them all. Let's fast forward to 5/14,
May 14. Senator Warner asked unanimous consent to go to conference.
Senator McConnell blocked it. Then go into June, June 4. Senator Murray
asked unanimous consent. Senator Rubio blocked it. Then go to July 17,
Senator Murray asked again, Senator Mike Lee blocked it.
They blocked going to budget conference because the tea partiers in
this party, the small group of Republicans, said we will go to
conference, but you cannot talk about raising any revenues in the
budget conference. We will go to a budget conference to try to solve
the budget problems of the United States, but you Democrats cannot talk
about raising revenues. That is because the only thing we want to talk
about is cutting--cutting, cutting. That is all. They will cut
anything: Head Start, education, EPA--don't like the EPA very much
myself, but that is all they want to do is cut.
We said you cannot solve a problem with just one side of that
equation. We don't know where the revenues might need to come from, but
there has to be a balance and we have to start paying down our long-
term debt.
That is one thing I wish to say again. I don't want anyone in this
government or the world or my State or the Nation to think Democrats
are not concerned about the debt. We are concerned about the debt. We
do not like the debt being this high. We want to try to find ways and
we have reduced--with our Republican colleagues--spending trillions of
dollars.
The Senator from Tennessee, to his credit--because I have not been in
those negotiations. I was not part of the group of 8, but I supported a
lot of what they have done. I was not on Simpson-Bowles, but I
supported a lot of that. To his credit, he has tried to come up with a
grand bargain to get our country to pay down our long-term debt but in
a smart way that strengthens our economy and does not pull out the rug
from underneath it.
But because the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cruz--through the Chair,
Senator Cruz from Texas, because Senator Lee from Utah, said: No, we
cannot go to budget unless you Democrats agree before you ever get to
the negotiating table that we cannot raise any revenue--that was what
the fight was about, so we never went to conference.
When you don't go to the budget conference, then you cannot start
negotiating the individual bills. My responsibility is to negotiate
Homeland. I want to say I am very proud of my colleague Senator Coats.
He and I were given a number by our leadership and we have completely
put our bill together with virtually no disagreement on a lower number
than we had last year. We had to cut a lot of things out. I might say,
we were asked by some Republican leaders to add a $700 million project
that I had to absorb into my budget because of something the
Republicans asked for--and the President supported, I want to be
honest. I was not a big fan of it, but the President and the
Republicans wanted it, so I had to compromise and put it in my bill
without any additional money and take some things out to make room for
it. That is what we do around here--that is what we used to do around
here. We are not doing it much right now.
For anyone to come to the floor to say to Democrats you are not the
ones who want to go to regular order--we will go to budget. Patty
Murray, the Senator from Washington, could not be working any harder.
She is one of the most respected Members in this whole
[[Page S7439]]
body, and I am not just saying that. She is very humble. She is very
smart. She is very much willing to negotiate. The Senator from Maryland
Ms. Mikulski is probably one of the most popular Senators who has ever
served in the Senate. Literally everyone likes her. She is not
difficult to work with.
She is tough. She is not difficult to work with. So we have two
extraordinary people trying to work through this. Yet we are not so
much being blocked by our side on the Senate--even though they have
blocked 21 times--they are being run by a group of extreme, radical
party members on their side who have now gotten the Republican Party in
complete disarray. That is not good for them. It is not good for the
Democrats. It is definitely not good for the country. Now we have to
figure out our way forward.
I know I have run into my 10 minutes. I don't know if the Senator
wants to speak or if he wants me to yield for a question. I am happy to
wrap this up and I will in a minute.
But to recap, I am willing to be part of the common ground to find a
solution, but I will not allow--as long as I am on this floor today and
I will be here for a couple of hours--for anyone to suggest that
Democrats have been holding up the process, we have been trying to get
to a budget conference for 6 months. We have been trying to negotiate
appropriations bills. But we will not be held hostage, nor the Federal
employees or the businesses or nonprofits or our States and mayors and
cities because Republicans cannot even go to the negotiation until they
get 100 percent of their way or until the government is shutdown, it
cannot open, or until we default on our debt.
We cannot negotiate under those terms. We can negotiate on terms
where the hostages are freed and we sit down like grownups and work
this out. I am hoping we can do that.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. CORKER. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her desire to see
this to a conclusion. I appreciate the many ways we have been able to
work together on so many issues.
Look, I do not rise to blame either side right now. I do not. Let's
face it, I have said from day one the effort that was taking place in
the House regarding the health care bill was not an effort that was
going to lead to a conclusion. It was an overreach. I know that. You
know that. They know that. The country knows that. So we have ended up
where we are.
But in fairness what has happened over the last couple of days is--on
the other side of the aisle it has gotten one tick too cute. We had a
group of folks who had an idea. I thought it was a good starting place,
candidly. We had six Republicans and six Democrats who had an idea of a
way to move beyond this. Let's face it. We all know what happens around
here. Two nights ago the White House weighed in and leadership on the
Democratic side pulled back a hair, asked the 12 folks not to have a
press conference yesterday to announce what their efforts were.
The fact is we are where we are. Let me say this. I am perfectly
happy with the two leaders negotiating a deal, and I want to support
the leaders in negotiating a deal. I truly am. But at the end of the
day what happened, let's face it, is we have had a little bit of a
pullback where House Republicans overreached, no question. What has
also happened over the last couple of days is there has been a little
bit of a push to overreach and undo what happened with the Budget
Control Act back in 2011, where budget caps were put in place, the
President signed it, it passed, components of it--it passed the Senate.
So just as much as the health care law is law, this also is law. What
we have had over the last few days is a little bit of a pullback. I
hope it is temporary.
What I would say is at this moment in time we have actually had a
little bit of a problem on both sides of the aisle. Let's face it. I
think we have an opportunity over the next 24 hours for that to be
worked out. What I would do is encourage the leadership to continue on
this pace.
As we all know, it takes 4 days to move anything across the Senate
floor. We all know the debt ceiling is this Thursday. What I hope is
going to happen is that both sides will admit there is a little bit of
an issue, on both sides. I think there is a strong desire by the vast
majority of our caucus over here to do something that is a pragmatic,
good-government step. At the end of the day, look, these events have
always been used in times when you have tremendous concerns about what
our financial situation is. They have always been used as a backstop to
hopefully negotiate some reforms. We have been on the wrong page for so
long, which I admitted to. We may not have even been in the right book,
but we have definitely been on the wrong page, and now we are finally
on the right page.
Let's face it. Not only are we on the right page where we are focused
on fiscal issues relative to the debt ceiling and the continuing
resolution to fund government, we are finally on fiscal solutions. Not
only are we on the right page, we are finally on the right paragraph.
We are focused on discussing mandatory reforms. We are on the right
subject. We have the two leaders who are now talking to each other. By
the way, I think the six Democrats and six Republicans who came
together have helped that effort.
There has been a little bit of a pullback. I think the White House
kind of encouraged--hey, let's see if there is some way we can bust the
sequester. In fairness, I am pretty sure that happened. I think the
Senators are pretty sure that happened. I know there has been concern
by some of the appropriators about the caps that exist, but it is the
law.
What I hope will happen is that we will end up with an agreement. The
time is so short. We are not going to be able to do anything
substantial on the mandatory issue. I think we all know that. I hope we
will end up with an agreement that at least sets the framework for us
to move, leave this behind us, as we should, but sets up the framework
to move into dealing with the mandatory issues in such a way as they
need to be dealt with.
I think it is unreasonable to ask people on our side of the aisle to
have a $1 trillion debt ceiling increase and not put some kind of
framework in place to look at some of the mandatory issues we know are
driving our country into the ground the way they are. I think there
should be some framework for that to be discussed over the next 60 to
90 days. The House has looked at 6 weeks. Some people have said that is
too short.
It seems to me that doing something for the short term to get
government up and the threat of the debt ceiling behind us--but doing
something over the short term--gives us some time to harness the energy
the Senator from Louisiana was alluding to. I know the Presiding
Officer has intimated some of the same things. There is some energy in
this body to deal with that, but the fact is we have not. A big part of
it--as I mentioned--is that we have been on the wrong subject for a
long time. We are finally on the right one. Let's come to a place where
we can now focus on what we should have been focused on all along
relative to debt ceilings and CRs.
I think the less we do--and I don't think anybody I have heard in
recent time has been doing this--to barb each other at this moment
would be in everybody's best interest, because this is a moment where
we do need to resolve this issue. This is not a moment to take shots at
each other. We know where we have been. We know the path we have been
down. It has been winding, it has been in the wrong direction, and we
are now in the right place. Let's let the leaders work it out. I hope
they will.
I hope while the Democrats say this is settled law--the health care
bill, the Affordable Care Act--that Democrats and Republicans will say
the Budget Control Act is settled law. We have agreed to some caps.
There is a more intelligent way of getting to those caps. I think there
are probably 70 people in this body who agree.
We could do some mandatory reforms and substitute those for some of
the discretionary cuts and still end up at the same levels of spending
that are in this bill, which would be more intelligent for our Nation,
and it would make our Nation much stronger. I think there is a lot of
desire to talk about those kinds of things as long as it is done in the
right way. There are all kinds of mandatory reforms. They are not the
same.
I know the Senator from Alabama, who just came into the Chamber, made
note of that yesterday. There are all
[[Page S7440]]
kinds of mandatory changes, and they are not the same; they are not
equal. We need to look at those and honor the trusts that have been set
up.
Look, I think we have finally gotten to a pretty good place. I really
do. I think both sides are a little bit at fault. People might discern
that one side is more at fault than the other, but now it is time for
all of us to focus on the right page, the right paragraph, so we can
get this done.
I think we can get this done as long as people don't try to--as the
Senator from Louisiana mentioned a minute ago--game this out to say
which side ends up with a bigger win. I am afraid a little of that
stepped in over the last 24 hours. I hope it will dissipate. I hope we
will end up in a place that is good for our Nation. That is what we all
came here to do, and I think it is going to happen, although I will say
I have been a little bit concerned because over the last 24 hours that
has not been what these conversations have been about.
Hopefully we will get back on the page we were on about 36 hours ago
and focus on doing something that is bipartisan, that will stand the
test of time, and will go over to the House in such a way that it has a
tremendous amount of support coming out of this Chamber, and that it is
not something where one side tries to peel off five or six items from
the other side. That is not going to stand the test of time. That is
not going to take us to a place that solves this problem in time to
keep the kind of things the Senator from Louisiana mentioned might
happen if we don't.
In all likelihood my time is up, and I yield the floor for that
reason.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Louisiana.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I would like to respond for 5 minutes,
and then I will have to take the Chair and relieve the Presiding
Officer.
Let me again say how much I respect the Senator from Tennessee. No
one on his side of the aisle--except perhaps the good Senator from
Alabama--has spent more time on budget issues because that is actually
the job of the Senator from Alabama.
The Senator from Tennessee has taken it upon himself to be a leader.
I agree with him that we are on right page, the right chapter, and in
the right book to talk about some fiscal issues.
I don't agree that the strategy to get us here was the right
strategy, but we are here. There is no sense in pointing fingers. I do
agree that the Senate needs to try to find our way forward because--the
Senator from Tennessee is correct--where we are now, there are no
winners and losers. It is just about doing what is right for the
American people. I want to do that for the State of Louisiana, and he
wants to do that for the State of Tennessee. We have lots of people who
are counting on us to try to lower our temperatures and find a way
forward.
Secondly, I also agree with him that whatever we can come up with
here has to be broadly supported on both sides--or at least core-
supported on both sides--because it is going to have to be something we
can bring to the House and say, look, this is the best we can do and we
cannot go over this cliff.
Thirdly, I want to make a point. On this Budget Control Act, that is
law. Let me say the Affordable Care Act, in lawyers' terms--and I am
not one--would say it is not settled law. It is law that has passed and
been upheld by the Supreme Court, but there have not been enough court
tests. I will take the Senator's word for it, but it is settled as far
as we are concerned because it passed.
The Budget Control Act is as well. But this is the point I would like
to make to my good friend from Tennessee: The House is willing to take
the sequester, which is the lowest number, but what they do--which is
very disingenuous and what the Democrats will not be for--is basically
take the lower number overall, but keeping Defense at a very high
number, and therefore cutting the heck out of everybody else.
There is no agriculture money, no education money, no health care
money, no nothing, but they want to keep Defense whole. That is what
the House is trying to do. I realize that is not what my colleagues on
the Republican side here want to do. As the Senator from Tennessee
knows, that is our problem. It is not about just taking the lower
number, but how that number is going to be allocated across
appropriations. That is how the Defense appropriations bill is put
together. It absorbs all the money and leaves all the other budgets
starving.
I know Defense is important. I am a Democrat who supported a strong
defense. I have stood against irresponsible cuts to the Defense budget.
But to take a lower number in the whole budget and then say, OK, we
will take the lower number, but we are going to give it all to Defense,
and then we can't fund anything in health, education, and social
services, which is so important--that is not right either.
One more point is this: The Senator from Tennessee has been very
brave. There are not that many brave people around here. He has been
one of the brave ones around here who said we may need to raise a few
revenues around here; we can't solve the whole problem by cuts alone.
In the last big deal we did, we were able to figure out how to raise
some revenues and also make some cuts so we could have a good and
steady way to balance our budget and not pull the rug out from
underneath this very promising economy.
I have 5-percent unemployment in Louisiana. I am not talking as a
State that doesn't have jobs. Our problem is we have so many jobs, we
need people to fill them. It breaks my heart we are ready to pull the
plug on that, and we are close. I know how much my people are counting
on us to get this done.
I want to thank the Senator, but I hope he will also stand up to some
of the other voices over there who say we can solve this problem by
cutting, cutting, cutting, and we can cut mandatory problems and cut
entitlements, that is all we have to worry about, and I think he knows
that is not correct.
I yield the floor.
Mr. CORKER. Madam President, I want to take 30 seconds and say for
the Record, I don't want anybody to think that I thought the strategy
that was undertaken was the right strategy. I think I have been clear
in saying I did not think that took us to a positive place. But the
point is we are where we are, and we are finally on the right page.
Let's stay there and solve this problem.
With that, I will yield the floor. I see the outstanding and
distinguished Senator from Alabama is here. He is someone whom I very
much enjoy working with, and I look forward to his comments.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Landrieu). The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank the Chair for the opportunity
to share some thoughts, and I thank Senator Corker for his commitment
and leadership on these difficult budget issues.
As a businessman and someone who fabulously ran an important city in
Tennessee, he knows we have to live within our means. There are limits
as to what we can do and maintain a healthy financial future for
America. I think that is important for all of us.
I first want to respond to a couple of things Senator Reid, the
Democratic leader, and Senator Durbin said earlier this morning that
sort of surprised me. First of all, he said there is no plan to break
the caps. I was--as the Senator from Tennessee was--with the President
on Friday, and he said there was a strong push from Democratic Senators
to spend above the limits of the Budget Control Act that we all agreed
to in August of 2011.
The Budget Control Act allowed substantial growth in spending.
Instead of growing $10 trillion over the next 10 years, we would have
reduced the growth of the budget to $8 trillion. It is not really a cut
over the 10-year period.
The President submitted a budget in February of 2012, 6 months later,
that would spend $1 trillion over those cuts. The Democratic budget
that just passed this year--the first time in 4 years--would have
increased spending by $1 trillion over those cuts. I am a little bit
uneasy because I think there is an effort, and there will be an effort,
which is unacceptable, to deal with those cuts--or to break the caps
that limit the growth of spending, which is the right way to say it. Of
course, there are some cuts we need to make.
Then Senators Reid and Durbin talked about President Bush's problems
with deficits. He didn't do a great
[[Page S7441]]
job in containing deficits. The highest deficit he had in 1 year was
$487 billion. The year before he left office, the deficit he had was
$167 billion. President Obama took office and rammed through, with
unanimous Democratic support, a stimulus bill that added $1 trillion to
the debt of the United States--the biggest single spending bill ever,
and every penny of that borrowed because we didn't have any money. We
were already in debt. So we borrowed $1 trillion to spend.
So for 5 consecutive years we will have averaged over $1 trillion in
deficits per year. We have never been over $500 billion a year before
that, and $1 trillion is $1,000 billion. So President Obama's average
in 5 years is unprecedented. It is stunning. We have never, ever seen
such a debt accumulation in such a rapid period of time. I think we
need to understand that. Our colleagues continue to defend it and still
want to spend more, and their budget would spend $1 trillion more that
they voted on and passed in this Congress.
They use the word ``extreme'' for anybody who wants to reduce
spending and try to attack people who want to reduce spending.
Senator Durbin talked about how we need a sound dollar. Is the dollar
sounder today, I ask Senator Corker, because we, this Congress, reached
a bipartisan agreement to reduce spending by $2.1 trillion and the
growth of spending by that much? Isn't it stronger today than it would
have been if we hadn't done that? It was a tense time in August 2011.
People weren't sure how it would all end, but it ended in a modest
reduction in the growth of spending which I think made the country
better as a result. The last thing we should ever contemplate is
backing off of that agreement and not at least adhering to that
agreement. We need to do a good deal more.
So I wish to share a few thoughts in general. I will go into detail,
if we have time, about the nature of the Budget Control Act and explain
it in more detail.
We have heard the word ``extremist'' thrown around a lot over recent
days. Let me share with my colleagues what I think is extreme. Extreme
is adding $6 trillion to the debt of the United States in 5 years--that
is extreme--and saying there is no spending we can cut. ``We have cut
every dime we can cut.''
Extreme is forcing a health care law through that the American people
oppose and telling them we can take $500 billion out of Medicare, and
strengthen Medicare, and then fund ObamaCare, double counting the $500
billion that will come back to haunt us in the future. Extreme is
refusing to make any concession, negotiation, or alteration to a health
care law that is going to financially bankrupt us. It will add another
$6 trillion to the long-term debt of America--almost as much as Social
Security, according to the Government Accountability Office.
They say it would be fully paid for. The President said in a joint
session of Congress it would not add one dime to the debt now or ever,
period, and the Government Accountability Office says it will add $6
trillion to the long-term debt of America. This is how a nation goes
broke. Instead of fixing Social Security and Medicare, which need
fixing, we start a whole new program that adds almost as much debt over
time as they do.
Extreme is knowing we are on an unsustainable debt path and refusing
to do anything about it. In the last 5 years, we have spent more than
$15 trillion and added more than $6 trillion to the debt. Never has so
great a sum been spent for so little benefit. Consider: Nearly 60
million working-age Americans aren't working. They are out of work. I
wish the unemployment rate were 5 percent, but the truth is the
unemployment rate in this country is 7.3 percent, and we have the
lowest workplace participation since 1975. There are fewer people
working today than there were in 2007. That is the key number. How many
people are working? Our population is up, but the number of people
actually having jobs is down, and more and more of those are part-time
jobs.
Median household income is lower than it has been on any year since
1998. Two-thirds of the job creation this year has been part-time. We
spent $1 trillion last year on welfare and poverty programs, State and
Federal combined. One in six Americans are on food stamps. Let me
repeat: One in six people in this Nation are receiving food stamps from
the Federal Government. This economy is not healthy. Despite the
endless inundation of Federal funds in some of our big cities, one in
three children still live in poverty in our Nation's capital. In nearby
Baltimore, one in three residents are on food stamps, and one in three
youth live in poverty.
This isn't a booming, growing economy. We borrow, tax, and spend. It
hasn't produced results that are good for our country. Growth is way
below what it was projected to be at this time. They were predicting
3.5 or 4 percent growth. We are not likely to add 2 percent growth this
year.
The only people who seem to be gaining in this economic plan is the
political class who came up with it and those with enough lobbyists to
profit from it. What does the President say? What does Senator Reid
say? How about our friends on the other side of the aisle, what do they
say? Spend more money. That is what they say we need to do. But it is a
budget that spends another $1 trillion, and we have to go to conference
on that budget, they say. It is rather odd that after 4 years of not
even producing one at all, now they are anxious to take one to
conference that adds $1 trillion to the debt.
Put more people on government aid. Energy prices too high? Oh, mail
people another check. They are hurting; let's send out government
checks. Factory closed? Mail another check out to people who didn't get
a job. Your school is failing? Send them more money. Families falling
apart? Mail another check. Then there is this one: Too many Americans
unemployed? Bring in foreign workers to do the job.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, do we have a 10-minute limit?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 additional
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.
By what definition can we call what we have been seeing for the last
5 years a success? It is just not. That is the problem. We have taxed
more, we have spent more, we have regulated more, we have borrowed
more, we have stimulated more, and it hasn't produced solid growth. We
have had the slowest recovery from a recession since the Great
Depression.
So this is the plan. Reduce wages that results in an increase in
unemployment, more part-time jobs, more regulations, and higher energy
costs. And we make that up how? Well, the government will just borrow
money and subsidize people in need.
That is not the kind of compassion I think we need. I think we need
to be asking ourselves, what is really happening that is hurting
Americans, and why can't we create a government that is leaner, more
productive, that allows growth and prosperity to occur, and not tax,
regulate, and borrow our country into debt. This is the fundamental
choice the Nation is going to have to be dealing with.
Indeed, my colleagues fundamentally are saying this: Well, we have a
problem in Washington. We don't have enough money. We just don't have
enough money. We acknowledge we are borrowing too much money, the debt
is too high, and we are on an unsustainable course. But, see, the
problem is not us. We haven't overspent. We don't have programs that
are running out of control. We have no unmanaged agencies and
departments. The problem is, American people, you haven't sent enough
money. Why don't you send some more money? That is what we need to have
in this country. The American people need to understand how smart we
are, how good we have managed their money, and if they will just send
us more money, we can figure out all of this and the government will
take care of it. It is your fault, America. You are hardheaded. You
won't send us more money. Send more money, and we will fix the problems
in America.
I reject that idea. We have to get our house under control and make
our government leaner, focused on productivity, and serving the
interests of people who are hurting right now. They are not doing well,
and this economy is not doing well.
[[Page S7442]]
I see other Senators are here, Madam President. I thank the Chair for
the opportunity to share these thoughts.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Ms. HEITKAMP. Madam President, I was presiding during the last
exchange between the great Senators from Louisiana and Tennessee. I was
struck because as a junior member of this body I get an opportunity to
sit in the chair quite a bit. I would suggest to anyone, if they want
to see someone who came to the floor and predicted this outcome--who
said it very early on--Senator Corker gave what I call the box canyon
speech. He did it repeatedly, because he could see what this would do
if we continued to take hard-line positions that really would achieve
absolutely no results.
I think Senator Corker has been a champion in calling out all of us
to behave responsibly, to behave in a fiscally appropriate way. He has
been a great mentor to many of us who are new in this body. We don't
always share the same philosophies, but I certainly appreciate his
willingness to tell the truth and to speak with common sense. That is
really why I came to the floor today.
Initially, when I came here, I thought I would write a book called
``That Makes No Sense,'' talking about all that we do and what we say
and how what we do doesn't really match up all that well with what we
say. I have to admit that in the last couple of weeks, my father's
voice has come to me over and over. My father never went to high
school. He had an eighth grade education, but he was part of the
greatest generation, a World War II vet. He had an expression for his
seven kids, in nine years--seven of us in nine years. When we would do
things that he thought lacked common sense, he would say, ``How darn
dumb are you?'' I am sure the Presiding Officer knows he didn't use the
word ``dumb,'' but I will use that word in the interest of propriety
here. So I rise today to talk about what we are doing now that makes no
sense.
We have heard in the last hour and a half a lot of discussion about
fiscal accountability and fiscal responsibility. Senators have been
coming to the floor and speaking about their perspective on how we need
to live within our means. I totally agree. But think of this: Think
about where we are right now, today, adding to our debt and deficits by
a dysfunction that is completely created right here in Washington, DC.
I am going to start by mentioning three things. The first thing is
the House of Representatives consistently not voting--not taking up the
CR, which was negotiated--short-term, negotiated and agreed to--and not
putting that CR on the floor for a vote. Then, the same people who
voted to not let people work voted to pay people not to work. Think
about what the American public sees when they see that, that we won't
let people who want to work--they know their work is piling up. They
are committed public servants. The Washington Post has been replete
with stories about people who want to get back to their jobs. They want
to be public servants. So we vote so they can't go to work, but we pay
them not to go to work. We won't let them work, but we pay them not to
go to work.
In the meantime, we don't have anyone to check out disaster accounts
in North Dakota. We don't have BLM permits being issued in Indian
country to help as the struggling Indian nations in my State achieve
some economic parity. We don't have things getting done. There is no
bill in the House with that headline CR--that is what I call it. It is
the headline CR. Whatever is in the headlines, we will pass a bill to
fix that. That is no way to run a government. It makes no sense.
Let's talk about the debt. Let's talk about the need to control our
debt and have a deficit reduction and a long-term plan to pay down our
debt. Why is it important? Because we pay interest on the debt, and
every dollar of interest we pay is another dollar we don't have for
Head Start, another dollar we don't have for education or research or
for higher education. So this is a real problem. What are we doing?
We have people who have said it doesn't matter; we don't need to pay
our debt. We can just decide which bills we are going to pay. I am the
same as every person in America. They know that when they go to check
their credit score--a person goes to the bank to get a car loan, and
the bank says: Well, you don't have a high enough credit score so we
are going to deny your car loan.
You say: But what is the problem?
They say: Well, you missed a credit card payment and you missed your
mortgage payment.
You say: But I always paid my car loan.
That is not the way it works. What they know and what the American
people know is that if you do not pay all your bills, your credit
rating goes down.
The tragedy is that we are not only going to add to the debt and
deficit of this country by playing this brinkmanship, we are going to
hurt every American who relies on credit--whether it is for a mortgage,
whether it is for a car loan, whether it is for a student loan. We have
now linked student loans to this problem.
Think about the dollars and think about what is happening to the
American people when we do not do what we need to do. We shut down
government but will not let people go to work, will not let people
serve the public, but then say: Oh, don't worry, we are going to pay
you. And then, by shutting down this government, we have cost millions
and millions and billions of dollars, adding to the debt and deficit--
dollars we did not have to spend.
Now we are going to play this brinkmanship on our debt limit. We are
going to shake up not only the American markets, we are going to add to
the interest costs of the American people and of this government. We
already have in the markets discounting of our Treasury bills. We
already have seen exactly what is going to happen. The longer this
impasse stays, the more dramatic this result is going to be.
The vote we took yesterday in the Senate sent a message--and the
wrong message, I tell you, the wrong message--to the markets. We need
to send the right message. We need to come together. We need to lead
from the Senate because the House, which is not even in session today
addressing this problem, seems to think there is no problem with the
debt limit, there is no problem with not paying our bills, there is no
problem with paying people and not letting them work.
Do you know what my dad would say? How darn dumb are you? What I say
is that makes no sense because as passionate as I know they are about
debt and deficit reduction, the reality is that what we are doing is
adding to the debt and deficit.
What we are doing is justifying--justifying--a 5-percent approval
rating for the U.S. Congress. Every day we are here that we do not
achieve a result, every day we are here that we do not solve this
problem, how can you argue that the judgment of the American public is
wrong?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, we are in the 13th day of a self-
inflicted crisis brought to us by the Republicans. Why did this happen?
Why are we in the 13th day of a shutdown, the 13th day of the American
people not being able to count on their government, which is supposed
to be of, by, and for the people? Why? Because Speaker Boehner over in
the House said he does not believe the American people want the
Affordable Care Act, and even though he believed they did not want a
shutdown, unfortunately that is what he brought to the Nation. That is
horrible news--horrible news. People are suffering. People are
struggling. Hundreds of thousands of people are not getting their
paychecks. Americans know a lot of us do count on that paycheck. It is
not as if we have massive amounts of savings behind it. If you do not
get that paycheck, you are in trouble. How do you pay the mortgage? How
do you pay the rent? That is what is happening. We have police officers
who talked to me yesterday, trying to use some gallows humor to explain
away their fears. They are afraid. They cannot pay the bills. They have
families. This is a disgrace--a self-inflicted disgrace--on our Nation.
I have not even gotten to the issue that is staring us in the face:
perhaps the first time in history that America would not pay its
bills--a default--even
[[Page S7443]]
though the Constitution is clear. It says, essentially, the debts of
the United States shall not be questioned. That is in the Constitution.
Well, they are being questioned.
We have a situation where not only are these employees of the Federal
Government being laid off and not getting paid and the communities in
which they live are going to suffer because they really cannot go down
to the corner store, but the contractors are not getting paid; the
small businesses are not getting paid; road projects--and I know
something about this as chairman of the Environment and Public Works
Committee--many new projects are stopped in their tracks, not because
people are not ready to go but because all the various signoffs that
have to be made before you start a project cannot be made;
investigations into chemical explosions that kill people every single
year in America stopped in their tracks; investigations into airplane
crashes stopped in their tracks; little kids kept out of Head Start.
Why? Because the Republicans do not like the Affordable Care Act.
What is it that they do not like about the Affordable Care Act, I ask
rhetorically. Do they not like the fact that 3 million adults in
America are now insured through their parents' plan--I am sure many in
the Presiding Officer's State and I know in my State over 1 million.
Are they that upset that they want to shut down the government because
people are getting insurance?
Madam President, 71 million people across the country--8 million in
my State--getting free preventive services, including immunization. Are
they that upset that they would shut down the government and make our
people suffer and shut the doors? Seventeen million kids with
preexisting conditions like asthma and diabetes can no longer be denied
health insurance coverage. The Presiding Officer is a champion for
children. I can imagine how she feels about this. They want to repeal a
law that finally has protected 17 million kids with preexisting
conditions like asthma and diabetes. There are no more lifetime limits
on policies.
There was a magnificent piece written in the Washington Post by one
of my constituents--a mom, a freelance writer--who talks about her son
who was born with a brain tumor, and over the years they have had to
have operation after operation after operation. They came an inch away
from reaching the lifetime limit on the policy--$500,000--and they
learned the Affordable Care Act passed, and this child got his health
care. Now, as she says, he is talking and he is walking and he is
shooting baskets. I saw that mom and son on the Lawrence O'Donnell show
the other night, and if you have not seen it on MSNBC, I think you
ought to take a look at it.
So you have to wonder, what is it they are trying to do?
What is interesting is that if you listen to my colleagues now, they
are off the Affordable Care Act. They kind of gave up on it because we
said to them: This law passed 4 years ago. It has a steady stream of
funding. It has its kinks and its problems. We are going to work with
you on that. But you cannot stop it. It was upheld in the Supreme
Court. You lost an election about it. Get a life. Figure it out. It is
happening. OK. It is happening.
So now they have a new thing--deficits. Madam President, you are
considered a fiscal conservative. I want to remind you and everyone
listening within the sound of my voice that not only did the Democrats
lead the way on a balanced budget, we actually got surpluses at the
time Bill Clinton was President. How did we do it? We worked together
with our Republican friends, but we passed a budget without one
Republican vote and we set the stage. Do you know what happened? Not
only did we have a surplus--in other words, we had extra money beyond a
balanced budget--we had created at that time 23 million new jobs. What
a glorious time. We did not do it by threatening to shut down the
government. We did not do it by threatening to default on the full
faith and credit of the United States of America. We did it by sitting
down, looking at each other, smiling, shaking hands, and working
together.
Let's open the government, let's pay our bills, and then let's sit
down and really debate how we are going to get to a balanced budget. We
have a lot of history to draw from. We do know when you put two wars on
a credit card and the biggest tax break to millionaires in history on a
credit card and a prescription drug benefit on a credit card it is a
problem. That is why we saw, under George W. Bush, surpluses turn
immediately into deficits. Now our colleagues suddenly are deficit
hawks. Where were they when George W. was putting all this on the
credit card? And now they do not want to pay the bills. It is
unbelievable.
This is not complicated. This is a self-inflicted crisis. You keep
the government open, you pay the bills, and through regular order, with
my friend the good Senator from Alabama and my friend the great Senator
also from Washington State, sitting down, hammering it out, we bring in
Paul Ryan, we bring in the House Democrats, and we sit down, and
through them we get a path forward.
Everything that is happening now is unnecessary. I want to repeat
that. Everything that is happening now is unnecessary--13th day of a
shutdown, pain and suffering throughout the country.
I have a little community in Los Angeles. Little kids--their noses
are bleeding. They are sick. They live near some industrial site. EPA
said they were getting on it. EPA got the message: You are out. We
cannot help you. We are closed down; 92 percent furloughed.
You will notice in all those little mini-bills, Madam President, you
did not see anything about that. No watchdogs anymore. The watchdogs
are gone. We cannot have government by press release. We cannot have
government by mini-bills. We are the greatest Nation on God's Earth,
and we need to open the doors and let the people in.
We have elections. Elections have consequences. Republicans control
the House, it is true, but Democrats control the Senate and the White
House. Therefore, we need to work together. We do not threaten to shut
down.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 60 seconds.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. So here is the good news. The good news is we have a bill
over in the House. It is a clean continuing resolution. It would open
the doors to government immediately. And it is a very short-term CR--
continuing resolution--and would still preserve everyone's right to sit
down and negotiate through regular order. We have a strong budget
chairman. We have a strong budget ranking member. America has gotten to
know them well. And the same in the House. Therefore, I put my faith in
those folks under regular order.
So we could open this government in 5 minutes, we could pass a clean
debt extension in 7 minutes, and then we sit down and negotiate. I did
speak with Leader Reid this morning, and I feel he is optimistic that
we are going to get there--I really do--and it lifts my spirits.
Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid have been around here a long time.
They have had their ups and downs and sideways and everything else like
everybody in the relationships here. But I think they know the moment
of history is calling them. I put my faith in that. I hope I am right.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, yesterday Senate Republicans rejected a
cloture motion on a strictly party-line basis for a simple measure to
prevent default for the United States of America. This bears repeating.
Yesterday we voted on whether to proceed to a bill to prevent default,
and not one Senate Republican voted for it.
I think it is fair to say that many of the Senate Republicans are
operating in good faith and have a strong desire to get out of this
mess, but they are concerned about embarrassing and undermining the
Speaker of the House by moving too quickly on this measure. Too quickly
came and went a couple of months ago.
Worrying about undermining the Speaker of the House should not be our
primary concern given the crisis upon us. We should be singularly
focused on protecting the dollars as the reserve currency, maintaining
our ability to borrow at the lowest possible rate, and
[[Page S7444]]
retaining our ability to solve problems as the greatest Nation in the
world.
The time for worrying about the implications for one or the other
political party or a faction within it has long since passed. It is
time to reopen the government, to pay our bills, to ensure the full
faith and credit of the United States, and to return to the negotiating
table on all of the challenges in front of us. In short, it is time to
get back to governing in the way we should.
I would like to emphasize a point that is not made often enough about
the current crisis; that is, there is simply nothing conservative about
the behavior of the House Republicans. Conservatives traditionally have
been characterized by holding a respect for institutions, a focus on
the needs of the private sector, and a desire to not waste money.
Are these principles being upheld or subverted by the actions of
House Republicans?
First, with respect to our Democratic institutions, the procedural
violence being done to the Congress is hard to overstate in this case.
The idea that a faction of a party is demanding concessions in exchange
for ceasing their infliction of pain on America is unbelievable. Why?
Because we are all Americans here. We all want to do right by our
country.
So the idea that one party is willing to inflict terrible pain on our
country, or else, was so beyond the pale that there is no rule against
it because no one ever contemplated that a major political party would
ever behave in such a way. The assumption has always been that elected
leaders would find a better way to stand for strongly held beliefs than
by threatening to bring the American economy to its knees. Up until now
that has been a safe assumption.
This is the least conservative behavior imaginable because it throws
us into a permanent crisis, unable to solve major problems for the
foreseeable future.
Second, conservatives traditionally have wanted to protect the free
marketplace. Some default deniers surmise that maybe the U.S.
Government can service its debt while delaying other payments, that we
can simply prioritize. The United States of America cannot do that.
Even if it were operationally possible, which the Treasury Department
assures us it is not, it would cause such severe harm to markets and
undermine our credibility so terribly that even talking like that may
be doing damage to our economy.
In 2011, Congress's delay in raising the debt limit forced the
Department of the Treasury to take extraordinary measures to ensure
that our government could pay its bills. GAO estimates that this raised
Treasury's borrowing costs by about $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2011.
That is $1.3 billion in added government costs just for coming close to
defaulting. This does not include the lingering added costs of
borrowing that continued beyond fiscal year 2011.
It also does not include the wasted time and resources that these
extraordinary actions meant. After all, this manufactured crisis took
the Treasury Department's focus away from other important cash and debt
management responsibilities. The Bipartisan Policy Center projects that
the full cost of that crisis to the Federal Government alone, not to
the economy, just to the Federal Government, will be around $19 billion
over the maturity of the debt.
There is nothing conservatively virtuous about defaulting on what we
owe. It will cripple free markets. It is Russian roulette played with a
bullet in every chamber. There so nothing conservative about that.
Finally, there is the conservative principle about saving taxpayers'
dollars. Two points: First, with the likely passage of the House bill
to provide retroactive pay to Federal employees, let me tell you what
is happening. We are paying Federal employees to stay home. We are
paying our dedicated Federal workers, who want to do their jobs, not to
do their jobs. This is not conservative. This is not liberal, for that
matter. It is upside down.
We are preventing Federal employees from doing their important work,
such as assisting small businesses and combating terrorism. Let me be
clear. Federal workers did not cause this shutdown and should not lose
pay because of it. That is why I cosponsored Senator Cardin's bill to
make sure they receive back pay when the government reopens. Our
Nation's furloughed public servants want to work, and many Federal
civilian employees are being required to work during this shutdown
without pay.
While it does not make sense to punish Federal workers for Congress's
dysfunction, it makes way more sense to simply reopen the Federal
Government. Still, the House refuses to vote on a clean continuing
resolution that can reopen the government tomorrow but instead voted to
give backpay after the shutdown ends. What is conservative about paying
people to stay home?
Second, this shutdown is costing us money, not saving us money. In
just the first week, it cost the economy $1.6 billion in lost economic
output and is estimated to cost an average of $160 million each
additional day. This is hurting small businesses and working families
across the country, and it is completely avoidable.
As the Presiding Officer knows, people are in real pain. This needs
to stop. There is nothing good in this shutdown or in the threat of
default. As a progressive, I have talked on this floor about how it
hurts our economy, the American people, and the priorities I am
fighting for. But you do not have to share my priorities to think this
is an awful mess. You can be a rock-ribbed conservative too. This is
bad for all of us. There is a simple way to move forward: Open our
government, pay our bills, and start negotiating on the issues that
matter.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schatz). The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from
Hawaii Senator Schatz and share his points. I think most of the
American people share his perspective this is an awful mess and it is
way past time that we fix it.
I am hearing from people in New Hampshire every day who are affected
by the negative consequences of this shutdown. I heard from some
employees at the Berlin prison. This is a medium-security facility in
the northern part of New Hampshire. It has not even been fully staffed.
It does not have all of the inmates there. Several of the employees
have emailed me talking about what their situation is.
One woman says:
We are expected to work and not get paid for the time
being. But it's going to be tough when both working members
of the household are government employees who aren't getting
paid. I am expected to make my Federal student loan payments
on time as well as my private student loans. How is one
supposed to do that when the government is not paying them?
They expect payment. Well, so do we.
I also heard from a gentleman whose family is back in New York
because he is still getting settled in Berlin. He has a child who is
ill. He says he was told last week that any sick or annual leave could
be used, but it would be considered as a nonpaid day during this
shutdown. He says:
I have been dealing for the past 3 months with my youngest
child who's been having kidney problems and had surgery
recently. My wife has been having kidney difficulty and had
surgery. So now I cannot respond to my family's aid because I
would be concerned about whether or not I am going to be able
to get paid for these sick days. We are hearing from people
across New Hampshire. Hundreds of Federal workers have been
furloughed in the State. New Small Business Administration
loans have been stopped. Federal Housing Administration and
VA loans have been slowed. Facilities in the White Mountain
National Forest have been closed.
This is the peak weekend for foliage in the White Mountains of New
Hampshire. Yet because of the shutdown, facilities, bathrooms in the
White Mountain National Forest are closed, campgrounds are closed, the
small businesses that depend on those for the rest of their season are
taking a huge hit. So many of the manufacturing businesses in New
Hampshire are being affected.
I heard from a company called Nanocomp, which is a real innovative,
small New Hampshire company producing next-generation carbon nanotube
technology. They have a number of Federal contracts. They have already
been hit by sequestration. So this is a double whammy. Their CEO said
to me:
[[Page S7445]]
We would burn through our very thin cash reserves as a
result of this shutdown, and when that money is burned, it is
not able to be replaced. So our basic financial viability can
be irrevocably damaged, even after the crisis passes.
For this company, the consequences of this shutdown could be
irreversible. I heard from another small business owner with a company
called GlobaFone. He called because he is so frustrated because again
his government contracts are not being paid. He does not know what that
is going to mean. Their cashflow is uncertain. He is not sure if his
line of credit with the bank is going to continue.
There are very real consequences from this government shutdown.
Then of course, on SBA loans, according to the Granite State
Development Corporation, which is one of the largest SBA lenders in New
Hampshire, about 20 loans have been put on hold with the Granite State
Development Corporation because of this shutdown.
Then, we have heard from some of our community banks that provide for
SBA loans that those loans are being held up. There is no doubt this is
having a huge impact in New Hampshire on families, on small businesses.
But it is having an impact across this country.
That is affecting activity. As the Presiding Officer said so well in
his comments, this is having a huge impact on how the economy of this
country is doing. As we think about the concerns we have heard
expressed about the debt and the deficit, one of the improvements to
reducing the deficit and the debt as this economy recovers is the
recovery itself. It has improved economic activity. It is making sure
businesses can do better. They can hire more workers, people get back
to work, and they can pay their taxes.
Yet that very economic recovery is what is being threatened right now
by this shutdown. We know that as bad as this shutdown is--and we are
in the 13th day--that 4 days from now we have an even more disastrous
potential impact to this country and to our economy looming. Economists
across the ideological spectrum have warned that if the Federal
Government defaults on paying our bills, if we reach that debt ceiling
and we do not continue to pay our bills, we could see businesses stop
hiring, retirement accounts and families nest eggs could lose much of
their value overnight. Interest rates would rise, which means higher
costs for consumers, small businesses, and the Federal Government.
Consumer confidence, which is so important for small businesses, would
drop sharply. We are seeing that already. In the last few weeks we have
seen the sharpest drop in consumer confidence since the fall of Lehman
Brothers back in 2008.
We have heard from some people who are debt deniers, debt ceiling
deniers, that these are just scare tactics, that these terrible
consequences would not happen. But, in fact, we saw that in 2011; when
we were having this debate again about whether we should raise the debt
ceiling, there were dire consequences to that debate. In late July and
early August, leading up to the debt deal of 2011, the Dow Jones
Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points. As a result of that drop,
average Americans with retirement accounts saw their household wealth
plummet by $2.4 trillion.
Our credit rating was downgraded for the first time in America's
history, and the crisis resulted in an additional $1.3 billion in
borrowing costs for the Federal Government. As the Presiding Officer
said so well: If you care about the debt and the deficits facing this
country, why would we inflict that kind of burden again on the economy
by saying we are not going to raise the debt ceiling.
The potential consequences, if we refuse to raise the debt ceiling,
on November 1 we have already heard from Treasury Secretary Lew that
Social Security and Medicare, which have not been affected by the
shutdown, would clearly be affected by a default. It could delay or
disrupt Social Security checks, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits,
military salaries.
According to the Treasury, delayed or disrupted payments would
prevent 57.5 million Americans from receiving Social Security benefits
in a timely manner. This could put the most vulnerable people in
America in jeopardy and prevent them from receiving the benefits they
have earned and the benefits they need to live on.
My former colleague and fellow Senator, Judd Gregg, a Republican--he
and I don't always agree on everything, but we certainly agreed on the
negative consequences of our failure to act to increase the ability of
this country to pay its bills.
In an op-ed that was published by The Hill newspaper, Senator Gregg
said the brinkmanship on default is: The political equivalent of
playing Russian roulette with all of the chambers of the gun loaded. It
is the ultimate no-win strategy. A default would lead to some level of
chaos in the debt markets, which would lead to a significant
contraction in economic activity, which would lead to job losses,
higher spending by the Federal Government, and lower tax revenues,
which would lead to more debt.
That sums it up very well. Senator Gregg understands, as I think most
of us do in the House and Senate, that for us to refuse to raise this
debt ceiling, to allow the country to pay its bills, to allow the
country to default, would be shortsighted, irresponsible, and reckless.
I hope that we are all going to come together to get this done in the
next couple of days and save this country from even more disastrous
consequences.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
Mr. SESSIONS. The vote yesterday was to raise the debt ceiling
without altering by one penny the spending and debt path we are on.
It was demanded by Senator Reid and the majority that we raise the
debt ceiling, give the President another $1 trillion or so in
borrowing, and no commitment to make any changes in how we got here.
That was not what we did in August 2011. Then, we agreed to reduce the
growth of spending over 10 years by $2.1 trillion in exchange for
raising the debt ceiling $2.1 trillion. Of course, we have already
spent all of that.
We have already borrowed $2.1 trillion more. Senator Reid and the
majority are demanding a clean debt ceiling bill, where we raise the
debt ceiling but don't bother to ask us to change our spending habits,
not one penny.
They say we can't negotiate on the debt ceiling. That is wrong.
I think it is perfectly appropriate. The House is prepared to do
this, but they want some changes in how we are spending the taxpayers'
money. The American people are tired of it. By a huge majority, they
say we should not raise the debt ceiling unless we change our spending
habits. Actually, almost a quarter of the American people say we should
live within our income. We shouldn't raise the debt ceiling at all.
The idea that the President of the United States would not pay the
bond holders of the United States, the debt holders of our country, if
the debt ceiling were not raised, is unthinkable. Of course he will. He
has to under the Constitution.
If we did not raise the debt ceiling, we would be bringing in $240
billion a month. The interest on our debt is $20 billion a month. That
should be the first thing that is paid--and I am sure it would be if
that were to happen.
I agree, the shutdown needs to end and the debt ceiling impasse needs
to be dealt with. It is not good for America. But we cannot just say we
are not going to do anything, we are not going to make any changes in
our habits around here. That is what is at stake.
I will take a few minutes to walk through our situation about how we
arrived at this point, especially with discretionary spending. I hope
this will be helpful to our colleagues. It is a product of our work on
the Budget Committee, where I am ranking member.
Many will remember in the summer of 2011 that Congress and the
President engaged in a vigorous debate, tough negotiations, about how
best to address runaway annual deficits of $1 trillion a year. As a
matter of fact, over 5 years we have added $6 trillion to the debt of
the United States of America.
Our discussions were ultimately resolved with the passage of the
Budget Control Act. The BCA, as it is called, had at its heart three
agreements. First it required a vote in each House of Congress on a
balanced budget. Of course, the Senate voted that down. A majority, I
believe, voted for it, but it didn't get the supermajority for a
constitutional amendment.
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Second, it allowed the President to increase the debt limit by $2.1
trillion subject to a congressional vote. That occurred.
Third, it provided spending controls of at least $2.1 trillion over
or equal to the debt limit increase over 10 years.
The debt ceiling has already been reached in 2 years, a little over,
and we still have not honored the commitment to reduce the growth of
spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years.
To rein in government spending the BCA did two things. It placed
statutory caps or limits on discretionary spending. Those are the
general programs of our government, which totaled $915 billion over 10
years. It was enforced by sequestration. It also called for an
additional $1.2 trillion of future savings from any combination
of entitlements and revenues agreed to by the so-called supercommittee
that the legislation formed to try to reach some agreement on long-term
improvements in our financial condition. This supercommittee was given
the challenge to do this.
If they failed, then additional reductions of $1.2 trillion would be
enforced through a future sequester mechanism.
The sequester was very clear, very real. The legislation mandated
$2.1 trillion in reduced spending, but it allowed the committee to look
for ways to do it. If the committee didn't reach agreement, there would
be some automatic cuts. Nearly $1 trillion of savings were booked
initially. The supercommittee went to work, but unfortunately they
failed to make recommendations to Congress to find the other savings
required under the act.
I commend the members of the committee. I do believe they tried their
best, but they didn't reach agreement.
With that failure, the BCA outlined the path forward: $1.2 trillion
in spending reductions, including interest savings, in both defense and
nondefense operations spread out evenly over the 9 years left between
the fiscal years 2013 and 2021.
Due to a variety of other laws passed over the years, primarily the
1990 deficit deal and the 2010 so-called pay-as-you-go act, which was
passed on a debt limit increase also, the reductions do not apply to
all Federal spending programs but only to those that are not exempt
from enforcement. Many social programs are actually exempt. The food
stamp program does not get a dime in reductions. Medicaid does not get
a dime in reductions, for example. These cuts were to begin in January
2013, but were delayed until March of this year 2013, inside of that
fiscal cliff agreement bill we reached, the American Taxpayer Relief
Act, in January.
When the sequester took effect on March 1, it covered both
discretionary and some mandatory spending, but less on mandatory.
Discretionary spending was reduced a total of $68 billion for this
fiscal year; $43 billion of that will fall on defense, and $26 billion
on nondefense spending. They each represent about half of the Federal
Government expenditures for discretionary accounts.
Additionally, $17 billion in identified mandatory spending was
sequestered, of which $11 billion came from Medicare.
Total reductions were $85 billion. It is not a whole lot when we are
spending $3.5 trillion, but $85 billion was at least progress downward
in spending a little bit, at least from the growth in spending.
Looking ahead, colleagues have asked me what happens next under the
Budget Control Act? In 2014, spending will be restrained on both the
mandatory and discretionary side of the ledger at the approximate rates
I mentioned. A sequester began on October 1 for mandatory spending--and
this is mainly Medicare--totaling $18.8 million. Medicare spending will
be reduced by a little over $11 billion, and the rest of the mandatory
savings will come from reductions in defense and other mandatory
spending.
There are some programs in the Defense Department that are mandatory
also. Most of the Defense Department is discretionary. So the minor
mandatory spending reductions hit defense and certain administrative
expenses for Federal benefit programs and so forth.
For discretionary spending, the direction is down. Under the BCA,
total regular discretionary spending is planned to be at $967 billion
this upcoming fiscal year, split between $498 billion for defense, $469
billion for nondefense, although nondefense got less of a cut than
defense.
This year's nondefense number is the same as last year; it is frozen.
The nondefense discretionary spending did not take another cut this
year. It is flat. Defense will be taking an additional $20 billion
reduction this year under the BCA.
A so-called clean continuing resolution would come in at an annual
rate of $986 billion, due to the fact that it keeps nondefense spending
below the BCA caps while reflecting the current run rate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I have a number of other comments
about where we are financially.
I would ask unanimous consent to have 1 additional minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. I would say, colleagues, that the defense cuts do not
count the war reduction costs. Those were entirely separate and not
part ever this.
The defense budget is getting hammered, but we ought to smooth some
of these reductions out in a more fair way. Fundamentally, though we
must remain committed to the requirements of the BCA.
I know it would be hard for my Democratic colleagues because the
budget they produced would spend $1 trillion over the BCA limits. The
President proposes to spend $1 trillion above those limits that we
agreed to in August 2011.
As part of this deal, it would be wrong for us to breach the promise
we made to the American people that if they let us raise the debt
ceiling to $2.1 trillion, we would reduce spending over 10 years by
$2.1 trillion. That reduction is really a reduction in the growth of
spending because we would be growing spending $8 trillion over 10 years
rather than $10 trillion over 10 years.
I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. FRANKEN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection. Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the cost of
the Federal Government shutdown, including a cost we don't talk about--
the opportunity cost. The fact is we are paying a huge price for what
we are not doing here in Washington while so much of our time and
energies are spent on this totally unnecessary shutdown.
Americans are rightly looking at Congress and saying: What are you
guys doing? Why are you hurting people? Why are you hurting families?
Why are you impeding our economic recovery? They are also asking: Why
aren't you working on what we send you there to do--on creating jobs,
on improving our educational system, on addressing our Nation's long-
term fiscal sustainability?
Last weekend, I came to the floor to talk about the effect of this
shutdown on individual Minnesotans. I receive e-mails from people who
are hurting. Let me read from a few. I will not read them in full
because of time.
Charlotte from Duluth writes:
Senator Franken: Veterans' benefits are important to me,
and I want to tell you my story. I have three children and my
spouse who currently attends college, we just got into the
hud-vash program.
The HUD-VASH program is a program that provides housing assistance
and support services for homeless veterans and their families.
Charlotte continues:
We thought it was a miracle to not be homeless. Now we are
facing the same thing, no check, no schooling. My family will
be homeless without food, clothes, a vehicle if this
government shutdown is not resolved. I am praying for a
miracle in this situation; my son is turning 1 year old next
month, I don't want to remember his first birthday with us
losing everything we have worked so hard for. My daughter
just started head-start. She loves it, but it is the last
thing on my mind now. I am thinking, how will I get her to
school? How will I provide a home for her to live in? What is
she going to eat? This is not a joke. I have never been one
to take a hand out from anyone. These are things I have
earned; and are now being taken away from me because someone
in Washington
[[Page S7447]]
wants to prove a point. What point is everyone trying to
make? That you have the power to do this?
Timothy from Bloomington writes:
My daughter is a single mother who cannot afford her home.
She has wisely decided to sell the house. She has persevered
and now has a sale pending. She is in a financial crisis and
needs this sale to go through or she will risk falling into
foreclosure. And now the government shutdown is threatening
to prevent the sale from going through because a branch of
the IRS that prints income tax transcripts is closed. At the
very least the situation will cost my daughter more than
$1,000 if she has to continue making payments, at worst she
may fall into foreclosure.
Last weekend, I also talked about the way the shutdown threatens to
deprive our seniors of vital nutrition programs, such as Meals-on-
Wheels. Here is what Millie Hernesman from Hibbing, MN, told the
Hibbing Daily Tribune about Meals-on-Wheels:
I'd hate to see it disappear. It offers a variety of
important meals that cover every facet--from protein to
fiber--and it comes right to my door. I like it a lot.
Sandra, a Head Start director in southern Minnesota, wrote me about
Head Start. She writes:
Dear Senator Franken, Thank you for your ongoing support
for Head Start. If the federal budget is not settled by
November 1st, the HS programming in Olmsted and Freeborn
Counties will have to shut down. Our federal grant is from
11/1-10/31. As the HS Director, I know the devastating impact
this would have on our families and staff.
Now let me talk a little about Head Start. Because of the sequester,
we have seen children in Minnesota lose slots in Head Start. If this
shutdown continues through the end of October, programs serving about
2,500 children could be affected by the lack of Head Start funding.
You know, kids are only 3 years old once. They are only 4 years old
once. The learning experiences they would be missing at that age
because their Head Start Program is shuttered due to this shutdown or
that they are missing now because their program has already been
shuttered because of the sequester can never be replaced. We are just
hurting our communities and our Nation when those little children lose
that opportunity.
We know from study after study that a quality early childhood
education such as Head Start returns between $7 and $16 for every $1
invested. Why? Because a child who has had a quality early childhood
education is less likely to be referred to special ed, is less likely
to be left back a grade, and has better health outcomes. Quality early
childhood programs can help reduce the rates of adolescent pregnancy.
Kids who have had a quality early childhood education are more likely
to graduate high school, more likely to go to college, more likely to
graduate from college, more likely to have a good job and pay taxes,
and they are less likely to go to prison.
If we really cared about our Nation's long-term fiscal
sustainability, we would be investing more in Head Start, not less. And
we have been investing less because of the sequester and are now
because of the shutdown. So that is just an example of the entirely
counterproductive nature of this shutdown and the tremendous price we
are paying for it.
But I rise today also to talk about the price we are paying for what
we are not doing here in Congress, for the unmet needs which we are not
turning our attention to because of the time we are wasting with this
shutdown and the threat of default on our debt.
We have a skills gap in Minnesota. What is a skills gap? Well, recent
studies have shown that between one-third and one-half of manufacturers
in my State have at least one job they cannot fill because they can't
find a worker with the right skills to fill that job. This is a
nationwide phenomenon and it is not just manufacturers, it is
information technology, health care, and other businesses that have
jobs sitting there waiting for skilled workers to fill them. There are
more than 3 million jobs in this country that could be filled today if
there were workers who had the right skills--more than 3 million jobs
today.
The thing is, we know how to train people for these jobs. We know it
because we have done it. We have done it in Minnesota and we have done
it elsewhere in this country. I have seen partnerships in my State
between businesses and community and technical colleges that have been
wildly successful.
Take, for example, Hennepin Technical College in Hennepin County. A
number of manufacturers needed workers skilled in precision machine
tooling. They worked with Hennepin Technical College to create a
curriculum, and they then donated machines for the students to work on.
At a roundtable at HTC I learned they had graduated over 300 students
from the program and 93 percent of those graduates had permanent jobs.
One of the manufacturers at the roundtable was Erick Ajax, CEO of EJ
Ajax and Sons. It is a metal stamping and sheet metal fabrication
company in Fridley, MN, that was founded by Erick's grandfather in
1945. I love what Erick has done with his company and how he has worked
with HTC--Hennepin Technical College--and the University of Minnesota
to train his workforce and provide them with good high-tech jobs and
pays for them to continue their education.
Erick gave me an example of one of his workers that I find so
exciting--not because it is extraordinary but because it is something
we can duplicate over and over in this country. He hired a guy who had
completed a certification program at a community and technical college.
The guy was really good at his job, so Erick sent him back to continue
his education and get his associate's degree. The guy continued to work
for Erick, continued to be a star, and a few years later Erick paid him
to go to the University of Minnesota to get his bachelor's degree, and
he got it. Now the guy is head of quality control for EJ Ajax, an
incredibly high-skilled job at an advanced manufacturing company.
Now, understand, this guy graduated from college with no debt--zero
debt--and with a great job. This brings me to what I want to be working
on here.
A number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know how
enthusiastic I am about incentivizing partnerships between businesses
and community and technical colleges to fill the skills gap. As I said,
I have seen many successful models in my State.
I have seen it at Alexandria Technical and Community College in
Alexandria, MN, which is sometimes referred to as the Silicon Valley of
packaging machines. I have seen it at South Central Community and
Technical College in Mankato, MN, where about 8 to 10 manufacturers,
who had helped fund and had given machines to the school's Right Skills
Now Program, sat with me and told me that between them they had about
50 job openings they could fill that instant.
In the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, of which I
am a member, we had a hearing a couple of years ago on workforce boards
that had successfully responded to the great recession and created jobs
in the face of it. We had four workforce boards testify from four
different States: Virginia, Wisconsin, California, and Washington.
Every model had been essentially the same: A business--manufacturing,
IT, health care--had worked with a community and technical college to
train unemployed workers for jobs they needed to fill. These are
public-private partnerships. The businesses have skin in the game.
Where do we come in here in Congress? Well, I have gone around
Minnesota to community and technical colleges and talked to businesses,
and I have talked to national experts in our State and around the
country, and the fact is we aren't doing this fast enough. Sometimes
these partnerships could do a lot more, train a lot more people with
some extra funding--maybe to buy a very expensive machine or to hire an
instructor with very specialized skills.
What I am proposing is a competitive grant program. Businesses and
community colleges would apply for grants based on how many jobs their
partnership would create, what the value of those jobs would be to
those hired and to the community, and how much skin the businesses have
in the game.
Let me tell you why I think we have to do this, just in terms of
global competitiveness. Manufacturing is moving back to the United
States. That is because of a number of factors. Manufacturing these
days is a lot more capital intensive because of the investments in
machine and technology. So labor as a piece of the pie has gotten
smaller, but
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skilled labor as a piece of the labor pie has grown. It is a much
bigger piece. That is why, if we are going to be competitive with the
rest of the world, we need skilled labor. Filling the skills gap is a
national imperative.
I go to high schools, junior high schools, and middle schools with
manufacturers all the time. I let the manufacturer describe what the
work is like at their factory. It is not dark, dirty, and dangerous, as
people think it is, or as it used to be. It involves advanced technical
skills, critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork. These jobs, good,
skilled, well-paying jobs, are available with the education you can get
at a 2-year community and technical college.
One of the concerns I hear is that people often think of a 2-year
education as a ceiling, and I understand that. But a 2-year education
doesn't have to be a ceiling. That is not how they think of it in some
European countries. They think of a 2-year education as a platform. And
if you think about it, with the pace of technological advancement
accelerating as it is now, and no doubt will continue, the idea that
you will have the same job in the workplace for the 40 or 50 years of
your working life is kind of ridiculous, especially in any field
involving technology.
So it makes perfect sense to go to a 2-year community technical
college and get an education that trains you in the kind of skills that
will get you a good-paying job. Then, as Erick Ajax does with his
employees, the business you work for can send you back to school and
pay for it, often while you continue to work and draw a good paycheck.
We just came through a big debate in Congress about student debt.
Think about getting a job after 2 years or even after a credentialed
degree and then having your continuing education paid for by your
employer. Think about that as a piece of an evolving approach to the
issue of college affordability.
Jobs, economic growth, global competitiveness, college affordability,
how we think about education, aren't these the things we should be
spending our time on in the Senate, in Congress? That is why I came
here. That is what I get excited about. That is what I get excited
about working on. Let's end the shutdown. Let's commit to not
defaulting on our debt. Then let's discuss how we strengthen our
economic recovery. Let's talk about which investments we make that are
smart and will lead to economic growth and which ones have outlived
their usefulness.
Every day the government stays shut down, every day we wake up under
the threat of default, every day we spend focused on something that
isn't working together to create jobs and rebuild the middle class is,
in my mind, a tragedy. It is an insult to all the people who are
struggling and it is a huge missed opportunity for our country. This
nonsense would be ugly enough even if we didn't have work to do, but we
do. We have so much work to do. It is time for Congress to stop
creating problems and start solving them again.
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. BEGICH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, I wish to enter into a colloquy with
several of my colleagues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, it is Sunday afternoon. I am sure all of
us as well as a lot of furloughed employees would rather be preparing
for coming back to work. Even though Monday is a holiday, maybe they
are thinking about Tuesday and getting ready.
But here we are on the Senate floor thinking about all the issues
with the shutdown, the default, and the threat of the default on us
right now as we creep closer and closer to this deadline. It is
unbelievable that we are at the risk of potentially defaulting on the
debt of this country.
I heard one of my colleagues earlier talked about the default
potential and maybe it is not as bad as people think and we will get
through this. The fact is, if we go into a default, there is no
question we have already seen--by the chamber of commerce, the business
community, many people whom we talk to in our home communities--the
impact this will have on everything from the stock market, interest
rates, the ability for small businesses to borrow money at a reasonable
rate.
The number that came out was a 7-year high in the sense of the least
foreclosures in the last 7 years for individuals. Yet as families are
finally getting back on their feet, with less defaults, here is the
biggest default sitting in front of us. We have tried to do everything
possible to avoid this effort in the next few days; one, by trying to
get the government back open so we can have negotiations and
discussions about what is necessary to ensure we don't have a default
that could jeopardize the economy.
In my home State we see the impacts. We had a hearing on Friday here
in Washington and we had the captain of one of the crab vessels, which
is a big industry for us. My friend in Oregon deals with seafood issues
also. It is an incredible impact that could happen. They have to have
the permits and the quota laid out by October 15 so they can start the
season because crabs don't sit around on the bottom of the sea waiting
for a shutdown to finish. They have another process they go through. So
if we are unable to get the permits done, this industry in Alaska which
sells a lot of crab in the holiday season, especially to our trading
partner Japan, Japan will go elsewhere. They will go to Russia and buy
crab. Once they start buying from another seller, the odds of us
recapturing that decrease.
As my colleagues on the other side like to say, we are just trying to
find a solution. Every day we wait is another day we are shipping jobs
overseas, and here is a clear example.
We have several Federal lands that are permitted for bear hunting and
hunting in general, fishing, sports fishing, by Federal regulators, but
we do not have those agencies open. So now those sports hunters who
come up to our State from all across the country and the world are
unable to access those places. The result? Thousands and thousands of
dollars are lost to these guides. We don't get this business back. Once
the season ends, it is gone. It is over.
This idea that the House has--and my colleagues and I have talked
about it. My friend from Montana talked about this a few days ago. They
passed on the House side a bill to pay all the furloughed employees;
435 to 0 was the vote. The Presiding Officer spoke about this on the
floor. We all support that. We want to get our employees back to work
and pay them because the furlough wasn't their problem--the shutdown
wasn't their problem. But here is what is amazing. They want to put
them all back to work and pay them, but they only send us a few
agencies to open.
In other words, if you are a fiscal conservative--and from the States
we all represent we have pockets as well as full components of
individuals who are concerned about the taxes of this country and the
spending--why would you pay for everyone to go back to work and then
not put them to work? It makes no sense.
The Presiding Officer was the Lieutenant Governor of a State. I can't
imagine if he and the Governor decided that we are not going to put
anyone to work, but we are going to pay them all for the next month or
whatever, he would be dragged out of office before he could blink an
eye. As a former mayor, I couldn't do that. It is unbelievable. But yet
that is how chaotic it is over on the House side. We are ready to solve
these problems, move forward, get the government open, and ensure that
we do not default on our debt.
I know some claim this is all new spending. This is not new spending.
These are all bills, for those of us on the floor right now, which came
before our time. But they are due and we have to pay the bill. It is
similar to when you buy a house. After you buy the house and you have a
banker, you don't get to say: I would like to stop and think about
paying you part of it or maybe not pay you all of it and still live in
the house.
They like to toss numbers around and make it sound as if it is more
spending. No, it is paying for what has already occurred. We have
actually cut
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the deficit since a lot of us came to office. When I came in January
2009, the deficit was $1.4 trillion per year. Today it is about 630. We
have cut that deficit over 60 percent in a combination of efforts, and
that is where we need to keep going, but this is not helping that
effort.
I know my colleagues on the floor have example after example, as I do
in my home State, of sports fishermen who can't go fishing and fees for
those folks who manage it, to the commercial fishing, and my military
folks. Here is what is amazing. Every one of the folks on the floor has
the same situation. Even if we pay our furloughed Federal employees all
their pay back, what happens to the contractors who work on behalf of
the Federal Government? They have bills to pay. They don't get that
money back. But they are told to go back to work, and I guarantee it is
going to cost the Federal Government more money. In my State there are
multiple examples, and I will leave it to my colleagues. But I know
when the American people are watching and when Alaskans are watching
this for the last week, they think it is ridiculous, and it is. It is a
self-created crisis by a few who believe the only way they can get
their way is to crash the economy and at the same time crash the
government.
Are there problems with the government? Sure. Are there things we can
do to improve it? Absolutely. Every day we should be working on it. But
this start-and-stop program doesn't work so well because we never get
to the issues all of us came to work on.
So I turn to my friends if they want to add to this. The idea is
going to be kind of a free-flowing conversation so people can see a
discussion of what is affecting us in our home States and see how we
can get to a solution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my
colleagues from Montana and Alaska to talk about some of the impacts in
our various States. I thought I would share six or seven different
aspects of the impact of a government shutdown and the potential of a
default and then turn this over to my colleague from Montana. Then I
think we are going to engage in a little bit of back-and-forth.
Before I list specific examples of the challenges that are faced, I
thought I would give a framework or an analogy of how to think about
this.
The legislative process is very much like a baseball game where
various folks come together. There are some for bills, some are against
a bill, they have a competition, and ultimately one side wins.
Normally, the side that loses, if they believe they are still right,
will say we will be back again later in the session, next year, just
like a baseball team, to compete again or we will be back next year
with an improved team.
But in this case, after the team that supported health care won, the
team that lost said we are going to appeal the ruling to the umpire and
we are going to ask the umpire to rule the game out of order and rule
that the losing team actually won. Then, if the umpire doesn't come to
our rescue, we are going to hold the crowd hostage and we are going to
threaten to burn down the stadium.
Those are the types of actions that are outside the sphere of the
normal legislative process--and they should be--because we have to be
able to have a dialog in a democracy where we consider a bill and
decide yes or no and then implement it and then come back and have an
argument over improvements to that framework or whether we should throw
it out completely. The American people have the opportunity to weigh in
and say: Keep those folks. They did good legislation or throw the bums
out.
But all that is broken if, instead of completing that cycle, we have
the losing team say we are going to hold the crowd hostage and threaten
to burn down the stadium. Then democracy doesn't function. That is
where we are right now. Holding the crowd hostage is the government
shutdown, and threatening to burn down the stadium is the threat to
default on the payment of bills due.
So let's look at how the government shutdown is reverberating in some
unexpected ways. Let's take home mortgages. A great majority of home
mortgages across the Nation are insured by Fannie and Freddie. That
insurance doesn't happen while Fannie and Freddie are shut down.
Let's take work necessary to improve our ports, where that work is on
jetties. Now that work has to stop because we can't incur a new
liability to the contractor to haul the rock out and put it into place
or maybe it is on a dredger that needs to take place during a window
between different salmon runs in the Columbia River. But now that gets
delayed and who knows when it will get done.
Let's talk about a company in Oregon that exports, and they need for
those exports an export license, but they can't get the export license
because Commerce is shut down and can't issue that license. They have
inventory that is waiting to ship out. Then they have cashflow problems
not only because they can't ship the inventory, they can't get the
payments for shipping.
Let's talk about the trickledown for folks who are unemployed. You
may think about it as an employee who is staying home. One employee
wrote to me and said, think about this, think about the fact that I owe
child support that is not going to get paid because I am not getting
paid. Then he said, think about the housing market. I am not going to
be able to pay my mortgage. What impact is that going to have on the
U.S. economy?
Let's take a look at the backlog of veterans' benefits. All over my
State I have veterans who are applying for benefits and they want an
answer, and the Veterans Department is trying to process those
applications. They have a high, intense effort to catch up on that
backlog. Suddenly the backlog is getting bigger instead of getting
smaller because the work that was being done to get rid of that backlog
grinds to a halt and therefore individual veterans are disadvantaged by
not having their applications processed.
Let's think about Head Start. Jessica wrote to me.
I work in early headstart in Grants Pass. We are facing a
shutdown due to the government shutdown. We have children who
need stability and a caring place where they can get their
basic needs met. So many families struggle to feed their
children and sometimes the food we serve is all those
children get for the day.
Then she says:
We provide more than just what some consider day care. We
teach, we nurture, we give hope to the next generation.
Shutting down our centers would mean a higher rate of poverty
and dangerous homes for families and children. We need our
voices to be heard. We need someone to stand up for us.
There are so many different ways in addition that this shutdown is
reverberating in Oregon. One that affects every rural community is the
impact on timber planting. We have had the shutdown going on of actual
logging that is taking place in Federal forests. Folks who are logging
are being told to stop cutting new trees, to pull their logs, skid them
out, if you will, haul them out and shut down.
What about the planning for the cuts for next year? What about the
supply of logs to the sawmills that is going to keep that sawmill
operating through the winter and into the spring? The reverberations
are substantial. What about the economy in those small towns that
depends on those log mills when folks don't have the money, because
they can't log, to buy food at the grocery store?
I know the issues are not unique to Oregon. I am sure many of them
reverberate in Alaska and Montana.
With that, I yield the floor for my colleague from Montana.
Mr. TESTER. I thank my colleague from Oregon and the Senator from
Alaska.
For many years my Republican colleagues have railed against
government. We find ourselves in an interesting time right now where
government is shut down. We are on the verge of not expanding our debt
limit, putting the full faith and credit of this country at risk. Some
of the folks on the other side of the aisle ran their campaign last
year about shutting down the government. They got their wish. They have
steered us into an unnecessary, very costly shutdown.
Yet during the shutdown we found and we have learned every day,
often, underappreciated functions of the government. Beyond the
headlines there are countless stories of the functioning of government
which is not doing its
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job because of the shutdown that is hurting American families. There
are a number of them in Montana.
We read in the news about children with cancer. We have an NIH
laboratory, Rocky Mountain Lab, in Hamilton. It is closed. It is one of
eight Biosafety 4 labs in the United States. They do critical research
on SARS, ebola virus, staph infections. It is not happening.
Mr. President, 98 percent of the National Science Foundation is
shuttered--no new scientific research grants. Four of the five Nobel-
prize winning scientists are furloughed.
National parks are closed, disappointing tourists and impacting
struggling communities around those parks. Closing fishing access sites
that support local businesses--fly stores, river guides, fly fishing
instructors, and just improved quality of life--does not allow people
into many of the best fishing spots in this country.
Head Start Programs are struggling, depending on when you got your
grant. In the small town of Box Elder, 10 miles from my hometown, they
are on the cusp of laying off 20 percent of their teachers. Why?
Because they can't get their Indian Impact Aid. Since that office is
mostly furloughed at this point in time, it is very difficult to get
them any help.
We have heard about the devastating floods in Colorado, the blizzards
in South Dakota. We do not have a farm bill, but these folks are doubly
impacted. Because the Farm Service Agency offices are shuttered, there
is no help for livestock producers who have literally lost thousands of
head of cattle.
When it comes to getting a cosignature on an FSA loan check, it is
impossible to do because the FSA office is closed.
Our military members are getting paid, but the ROTC students all over
America who rely on the government to help pay for their rent--that is
not happening right now.
The Senator from Oregon talked about VA disability claims put on
hold. The backlog is growing. It was shrinking.
The IT system for a smooth transition between the DOD to VA, the
electronic medical records, is on hold. By the way, that is critically
important to get our backlog to a reasonable number.
Home loans, education assistance, transportation office, workforce
training--all put on hold. Domestic abuse shelters, Meals on Wheels,
flu monitors at the CDC, the Mine Safety and Health Administration,
National Transportation Safety Board--all furloughed except for the
essential staff who are working without pay.
Along that line, I want to say thank you to the folks at the rostrum
who put in 3 pretty tough weeks. In the last week and a half-plus,
almost 2 weeks, they haven't been paid. They are here on a Sunday
afternoon, much like the police officers who responded to a tragic and
scary situation last week were running toward the problem, who were on
duty but were not getting a paycheck.
The House's political appeasement approach has been an attempt to
open the most popular and most noticed agencies, picking winners and
losers in a system instead of working together.
Then we have the debt ceiling, a situation where there is a
Republican-driven government shutdown to bring us close, too close for
comfort, to defaulting on our national debt. Some folks out there will
say it is no big deal. I can tell you if you are in business you know
it is a big deal. Some folks say you can prioritize your payments, but
the fact is that without increasing that debt limit, prioritizing the
payments will not fix the problem.
We have folks all across this country, business people, working
families, who are losing confidence in the United States. I just met a
group of World War II vets who got off a plane about 2 hours ago in
Washington, DC. A number of them talked to me about how we need to get
our act together here. They fought for this country, but we are not
fighting for them, and we need to.
The Montana Chamber of Commerce, bankers across this country, Macy's,
business leaders--all have said don't be playing with this fire. In
fact, a friend of mine by the name of Tony James, who is president of
Blackstone Group, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
Using the debt ceiling to settle domestic squabbles is
playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun. And worse, by
continuing on the present course, we are playing a deadly
game with a gun held by some of this nation's biggest rivals.
I couldn't agree more. We need to reopen this government. We need to
pay this Nation's bills. And we need to put this country back in the
leadership role in this world.
Senator Begich, the Senator from Alaska, talked a little bit about
park shutdowns. I was curious to know, with Denali National Park, which
is a big deal--I assume the Senator is in the same place as we are with
Glacier and Yellowstone. It is closed for business?
Mr. BEGICH. Yes. Not only closed for business. As we know, the FAA
also is shut down. There are elements of FAA still operational, but the
fact is, in order for visitors to my State--and I am sure to the
Senator's State, to Oregon, there is a lot of general aviation that
moves around, moving tourists, moving businesses, moving folks from
place to place. If you are in need of parts--people may not realize it,
if you need parts for those planes you have to register them with the
FAA. But if the FAA is closed, you cannot register the parts, you
cannot get the parts for your plane, and they are not making the parts
then because they know they cannot get them registered. It is like a
ripple effect.
The worst part of this is those businesses that are on the outskirts
of all these national treasures we have in this country--Oregon has
them, Montana has them--and the net result is those businesses don't
have customers. Customers do not show up. Those businesses that had
prepared, built their inventories in anticipation, got material ready,
got guides ready, got their businesses all ready to go for those tours,
cannot do them. They have no customers because they have no place to
take them. The reality is, the net result for these individuals--I
think my friend from Oregon says it so clearly in discussions I have
had with him--it is almost like--my friend from Oregon can correct me
if I say this wrong--but it is almost like a tax for these businesses.
They do not get that money back they have invested. It is gone. It is
over. They do not get to repeat the season. It is not like the movie
``Groundhog Day,'' you don't get to go over and over it again. If it is
gone, it is gone. All of us have that with these parks and national
treasures. The Senator talked with me about this.
I want to mention one thing that is very important, because we have
heard it on the floor and I have heard it in the media accounts. They
say we cannot extend and pay the debt of this country, making sure we
do not go into default unless we have more spending cuts. We did that.
We did that. The continuing resolution cuts $70 billion on an
annualized basis out of the budget this year, this coming year. We cut
$70 billion. We actually talked about it, tried to find common ground,
and the common ground was we agreed with their number, the House
number. We brought it all the way down to their number. Seventy billion
dollars was taken, additional cuts on an annualized basis, to our
budget. Now you have to pay the bill.
When you hear this ``we didn't give one extra penny to make sure we
don't default''--first of all, the default should not be part of the
debate here. We should never default on our debts, period. But if you
want cuts, we have done it, $70 billion.
Now because of the work they are doing or lack of what they are
doing, the government shutdown is causing kind of an indirect tax on
these business people, which is unbelievable.
Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague from Alaska. He is correct in
pointing out that essentially right now we have a shutdown tax being
imposed on families and businesses across our country. Indeed, we are
facing just a few days from now a default tax. A lot of folks from
across the aisle come here and say they took a pledge to block any form
of tax. But this is the worst kind of tax of all.
Mr. BEGICH. They do not get any recovery.
Mr. MERKLEY. There is absolutely no value, no revenue raised that can
be applied to the important aspects of running a government or reducing
our deficit. Indeed, this is a burden on
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American businesses and American families that has no benefit in any
other way.
In fact, the Senator mentioned the ripple effect. That ripple effect
means what damages a family--I gave the example of a simple situation
when an employee does not get their wages. They cannot pay their child
support and they cannot pay their mortgage--and then what goes on from
there.
Let's take, for example, the cut in food stamps. If food stamps are
not issued, then it is not just the family who is directly hurt--and I
might mention our most vulnerable families--but it is also the grocery
stores that are hurt. They may have to lay off additional employees,
additional ripples. This is a huge infliction of a burden.
If we want to think of a few examples of what happens with the
default, we can think of many. Let's picture the default tax. By
threatening not to pay our bills, that reduces confidence in Treasury
bills, so therefore the interest rates go up on those Treasury bills.
The interest rates therefore on mortgages go up and the interest on
home loans go up.
Mr. BEGICH. If I can interrupt, car loans, credit cards, student
loans, any type of credit you want to get to grow your business, expand
your educational opportunities--maybe you are doing holiday shopping
this year--all that is impacted in a negative way.
Mr. MERKLEY. Indeed, maybe you were planning to take out a home
equity loan to repair your roof or make improvements to your house. You
are going to pay a higher price. This is a default tax on all of
America that does nothing productive at all.
This infliction of pain and agony on our businesses and our families
is something that has not apparently resonated for some of my
colleagues who want to threaten a default. Some of them have come to
this floor and said: We think there is enough revenue coming in that we
can pay our T-bills--our Treasury bills--and we can default on other
obligations and therefore there won't be much damage.
We had a group of experts come in and testify before the banking
committee. They said: Look, envision a situation where you are applying
for a mortgage and you tell the bank that you have always made your
house payments, but you were not able to make some of your other
payments, such as your student or car loan. The bank is going to charge
you more for your house payment because there are bills you have been
defaulting on.
The same situation applies in America. If we pay our Treasury bills
but we don't pay other obligations, that in itself will lower our
credit rating and increase interest rates. A default is a default. You
can choose whom you are going to default on, but no matter whom you
default on, there will be a default tax on American families and
American businesses with great damage to this country. That is why
President Reagan simply said: Do not mess with the good faith and
credit of the United States of America.
Mr. BEGICH. It makes no sense that we would be here. Earlier this
week Senator Tester and I were on the floor talking about this issue.
When I went home, my 11-year-old son asked: How do you not pay your
bills? We can have all the fancy economists we want, but when you have
an 11-year-old ask you the question, it should tell you something about
this country--what we should do to meet our priorities. When you don't
pay your bills, you are in default. When you are in default, you
destroy your credit rating. When you destroy your credit rating, the
cost of doing business goes up. It is very simple.
They can use all the fancy words and different ways to slice it and
dice it by saying that we can pay some or we can pay a little. No, that
is not how it works. Can you imagine if every household watching us
today said: I think I will pay part of my bills today. Maybe I will pay
another bill next week, but I won't pay them all. Congress doesn't pay
all its bill, so I guess that is the new norm.
If my 11-year-old son can pick this up, you can surely guess what is
happening when people around the country are watching us. And I say
``us'' in a collective way. All three of us are appropriators. We have
dealt with cutting $70 billion out of the budget already for this year.
We sucked it up and said: We are going to do that because it is right
for this country. Even though we may not have agreed on that number, we
agreed to make sure we did this because we wanted to make sure we did
not default and that we kept the government working. We will continue
to fight on the issues we care about.
It is amazing to me. Sometimes we have to look to the young folks in
this community and around this country, and they probably know better
than we how to solve this problem. I am just guessing.
Mr. MERKLEY. I think the children across the country know that
responsible individuals pay their bills and responsible governments pay
their bills. I am sure this concept is common sense in the great State
of Montana.
Mr. TESTER. The Senator is correct. There are so many folks out there
who claim to be probusiness folks and that they know what is going on
in the business community. This whole debate that revolves around the
debt ceiling is about as antibusiness as we can have.
The fact is that if we don't increase the debt ceiling--and the
Senator from Oregon and the Senator from Alaska have already pointed it
out--interest rates not only go up for our national debt, they go up
for everybody. The economy decreases and shrinks, and as a result we
have less revenue coming in. Everybody knows that if we are going to
address our national debt, we have to have a vibrant economy to address
it.
We came through a period of time where we had a Vice President who
said debt doesn't matter, we got into two wars, two major tax cuts, a
Medicare Part-D plan, and the worst recession--some would call a
depression--since the 1930s, where the tax revenue dropped like a rock
and the safety net programs to keep people afloat--which cost money--
were decreased.
Now we have a situation with the debt that we need to deal with. The
worst thing we can do is play around with the debt ceiling so our
economy tanks again, and then we will see not only the interest rate go
up on the debt but the debt go through the roof one more time. It does
not make any sense from all the different perspectives. When people
lose confidence--whether it is people within this country or outside
this country who buy our debt--that means the rate we pay is going up.
Mr. BEGICH. Is it fair to say that we have been moving this annual
deficit down every year? It has been on the right glidepath--down. If
we have a change in the T-bill rates, this effort to keep moving the
deficit down will quickly reverse because we pay interest.
Mr. TESTER. Absolutely. It could have such a negative impact on the
GDP that we could have a negative fourth quarter if this crazy talk
keeps going.
Mr. BEGICH. To remind folks who are listening, the gross domestic
product is basically the business of the country.
Mr. TESTER. That is correct.
Mr. BEGICH. If it goes in the wrong direction, it will have a direct
impact on the people who are working--meaning fewer people will be
working. If there is less business, there is less need to hire people,
which means higher unemployment and more foreclosures. It is a domino
effect.
Mr. TESTER. That is exactly correct. I think everybody on the floor
right now--and there are a lot of other folks--would love to sit down
and figure out ways to get the debt and deficit under control. As Tony
James said, you don't do it by holding a loaded gun.
Mr. MERKLEY. If I could just emphasize the point the Senator from
Montana just made, there are those who say they want to engage in a
default strategy because they think it will somehow do something
positive in controlling our deficit and controlling our debt, but what
the Senator from Montana pointed out is that when you engage in using
default as a weapon, you reduce revenues, increase costs, which
increases deficits and increases the debt.
I think what we can summarize is not only is the default strategy
severely damaging to families and businesses across the country, but it
is damaging to the effort to reduce our deficits and reduce our debt.
Mr. TESTER. And I might add it could not happen at a worse time. We
have seen the economy rebound, and it
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is starting to head in the right direction. We have an opportunity to
have more growth. We have an opportunity to get some manufacturing back
in this country. We have an opportunity to really help rebuild this
economy. Because of the actions of Congress, particularly folks over in
the House, we have seen the stock market--God help us today. I think it
opens right now.
Mr. BEGICH. The Asian markets open right about now.
Mr. TESTER. I can't help but think that these folks are back there
shaking their heads and saying: We have no confidence in what Congress
is doing.
Mr. BEGICH. For the first 15 to 18 days of debate, the market slowly
slid about 800 points. Last week, when there was a sliver of
opportunity and people thought maybe we would get the default off the
table, that market shot up 300-plus points. The business community
wants us to establish some certainty here so they can take their
resources, invest in this economy and continue to move forward.
We know the resources are there. They tell us that in our home
communities. I had a business that just laid off another 400 people
because of this shutdown. They are ready to grow their business
interests out of Anchorage and around the globe, but the challenge for
them is they are not sure what we are going to do.
Within a couple of days when they saw a glimmer of hope, the market
shot right back up, which tells us again that the market is ready.
Some people said that yesterday's vote was just a partisan vote. No,
we had to actually not default, so we supported not defaulting on our
debt. I will have debate after debate on where we need to cut. Again,
the continuing resolution cuts $70 billion on an annualized basis. We
have met their number with that cut, and we are willing to keep to that
agreement, but let's not throw the economy over the edge or crash it
into the wall, as some seemingly want to do.
Mr. MERKLEY. I ask through the Chair whether the Senator knows of any
business group in Alaska that is arguing that the government shutdown
strategy or the default strategy is good for business.
Mr. BEGICH. I come from the small business world. At the young age of
14 I started my first business. I don't hear the business community in
my State asking me to crash the economy and keep the government shut
down because it has no impact.
When we look at the concentration of Federal workers, it is Maryland,
Hawaii, and Alaska, in that order. When we think of the State budget,
25 percent of the State operating budget is from Federal resources; 50
percent is capital money that comes from Federal resources; the
military is pretty strong; and over $1 billion goes to Social Security
payments. I can go through the list. It has a huge impact.
There are no businesses calling me and asking: Can you keep the
government shut down longer? I don't need that permit to drill on the
National Petroleum Reserve. I don't need to go fish for that crab this
week. I don't need to fly my plane to move that cargo out to a rural
community. I don't hear that.
I have people call me and say--I can't use the words they use because
we are on the Senate floor, but you can fill in the blanks. They are
very upset that they cannot conduct their basic business operations
because of some of the connectivity they have with the Federal
Government through permits or land use. Denali National Park is a great
example. It is an unbelievable place to visit, but nobody can visit it.
The hotels and the facilities around it are not getting the access they
need.
Mr. MERKLEY. It is the same in Oregon. I don't think I have heard
from a single business group that has argued in favor of the shutdown
or default strategy. I know many businesses need the export license,
and they need permission to take up the subcontract or the contract on
the jetty or the dredging or any number of other areas.
We have Crater Lake National Park. The tourist industry relies on
people to come to that area. There are timber companies that need to
have permission to complete their logging contract. In every single way
they know, they are partnered with the government groups that enable
this work to go forward, and they want those doors open. They want the
government open.
I ask through the Chair, what is the story in Montana?
Mr. TESTER. It is the same in Montana as it is in Oregon and Alaska.
Particularly startup businesses and entrepreneurs who have a great idea
are holding back because they don't want to get into a situation where
they start investing money and interest rates go through the roof and
they are not able to fulfill the dream they have which would also
create jobs and grow more economy.
We are getting very close to October 17. The longer we play with
this, there will be a point in time where the damage that will be done
will take a very long time to rebuild. I think now is the time--in
fact, hopefully tomorrow--to get a commonsense agreement on the Senate
floor to open the government and deal with the debt limit in a way that
makes sense for this country and makes sense for the world because it
will not only have an impact here, but it will have an impact around
the world.
We are seeing businesses in our States that are not investing right
now. They are holding off at this point. They were starting to invest.
So it is very unfortunate. We are playing with fire, and we should not
be doing that. We should be working to build the economy, not to try to
contract it.
Mr. BEGICH. I think all of us on the floor agree that we have hope
that an arrangement and deal will be made. We want to reopen the
government, pay our bills, not go into default, and recognize we still
have more work to do because we do need to bring down the deficit. We
need to bring it down and ensure that at the end of the day we are
paying off our debt long term. But we have to get through this process.
We can't just keep doing these short term, stop and go. I think we are
all here to make sure that happens.
So from my perspective, I am not happy that I am here on Sunday, but
I am glad I am here on Sunday, trying to work with others to solve this
problem. I would rather be back home with Alaskans talking about the
needs they have and trying to figure out what we are going to do in the
long term on education, making sure we oversee our oil and gas
development, our mining and our timber, which I think both of our
States have a lot of interest in.
We are here now, and we have to resolve these issues. They are going
to be tough. There is going to have to be a little give-and-take to
find that common ground. At the end of the day, I believe we can get
there. But we can't get there if people are hardened into their views,
and trying to claim that we haven't done enough already. We have done
$70 billion worth of cuts already on an annualized basis.
So I thank my colleagues for coming to the floor and spending their
time on a Sunday talking about an important issue. Hopefully, the next
time we are here we can talk about a great resolution that moves this
country forward and keeps our economy going.
I yield to my friend from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate my colleague from Alaska helping to
organize this conversation. I must say, I think if we got 10
commonsense people in a room, they would agree to do that short-term
continuing resolution. The Democrats have agreed to a Republican
number. It is a win for the Republicans. The Democrats are asking for a
negotiation. That is a win for our country. We are asking for the
default strategy to be set aside completely because it is completely
contrary to any responsible organization to use a strategy of not
paying their bills.
On that foundation we should get back to the normal process of
considering legislation we should be passing, such as how we restore
the regular budget and appropriations process. I know that would be
very welcome across this Nation. This Senate has to be able to get a
budget process that isn't cut off right out of the gate, if you will,
as it has been this year. It was 6 months ago that we passed a budget
and we started to go to a conference committee, and a small group of
colleagues filibustered starting the budget conference committee.
Somehow we have to have a process where we can get into a conference
room and have that conversation and not have a small group basically
sabotage the entire budget appropriations process that is so important
for our Nation.
Mr. BEGICH. I agree. The last thing I will say this afternoon is--and
I will
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say it as an appropriator--that is what we should do. We need to get
past this stop-and-go. We need to sit down and focus on the long term.
We need to get the budget resolved. We need to stop spending our time
trying to get people to the table. That is all we have been trying to
do. We need to get a budget resolved so people will know what their
annualized budgets will be. I totally agree with the Senator from
Oregon.
Hopefully, over the next 24, 48 hours, we will get down that road,
and we will get this short-term stuff out of the way and get on with
the longer term.
Again, I wish to thank the Presiding Officer for the time and for
allowing us to speak today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Klobuchar). The Senator from Missouri is
recognized.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Madam President, I wish to thank my colleagues for
what I think was a very vivid way in which they laid out the severe
damage that is occurring because of the shutdown and the potential that
one of the most important economic powers, if not the most important
economic power in the world, is fooling around with the notion that we
not pay our bills on time.
I wish to compliment various newspapers around the country that are
doing their best to point out to people that this isn't some kind of
exercise that is just about all of us here in Washington. This isn't
about the politics or the posturing. This is about real people and the
pain they are feeling.
This morning in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the headline was
``Shutdown is casting a wide net of grief.'' In that article, it went
through a number of different people's lives and how they were hurting
because of the shutdown--people such as Nancy Jones.
Nancy retired from the Army 4 months ago, and she was at a food
pantry this weekend because her retirement check had not processed
through yet, and now it is not clear when she is going to get her
retirement check. She moved back to St. Louis to help with her four
grandchildren, and now she is putting her head on her pillow tonight
not knowing when her pension, which she has earned, will actually come
through because of the shutdown. As a result, she is going to a food
pantry at a local church to get two bags of groceries.
Then there is Rasheedah Whitfield. She went to the Social Security
office in St. Louis to do something very simple, and that was to
replace her lost Social Security card. She knocked and no one was home.
The Social Security Administration has furloughed people who do things
such as getting a replacement for people's lost Social Security card.
Why is that so important? Well, because Ms. Whitfield needs her Social
Security card in order to fill out her Section 8 application, and time
is running short for her to find housing for herself and her small
child. She is unsure what she is going to do if she can't get that
replacement card.
Then there are the people who have been furloughed who clean one of
the Federal office buildings in St. Louis. They work for $11 an hour
cleaning the Goodfellow Federal Center in north St. Louis. It is an
$11-an-hour job. These people aren't sitting on a big cushion. These
people are trying to figure out now, without that $11-an-hour job, if
they can either pay the rent or make the car payment, but probably not
both.
Then there is Jill Ketchum who works and who is fortunate that her
child, her 5-year-old daughter, goes to the Head Start school. She is
not sure what she is going to do because she has been told by the Grace
Hill Settlement House that the Head Start program cannot last through
the month if the shutdown continues. That mother, who is working and
uses that important Head Start program to make it work for her family,
will have no place to take her daughter. What does she do? Does she
have to quit her job? What about all the other single mothers out there
with young children who have the rug pulled out from under them because
Head Start can no longer operate?
Jill and Rasheedah and Nancy don't deserve this. They are playing by
the rules. They are doing everything they should be doing in this great
country. They are not asking us to do them a favor. They are just
asking us to do our job.
Here is what I am so frustrated about. This pain is being inflicted
on millions of Americans, and this pain grows every day. Somebody
likened it the other day to when the power goes out at our home. In the
first couple of hours, we are getting candles out and getting out the
board games, and we think, Oh, this is kind of fun. I got the feeling
around here the first couple of hours that we didn't understand the
gravity of what this meant to so many people throughout this country
and to so many people in my State. But after the electricity has been
off a few hours, all of a sudden it is not funny anymore. We start to
lose our food in the refrigerator, and we wonder how we are going to
replace it. We wonder about what is going to happen with our jobs. We
wonder about keeping warm. That is what we are getting to now. We are
getting to the point where these families across America cannot believe
this is going on day after day.
Here is the weird part. What are we doing? It is not even clear to me
what the other side wants. It started out with a goal that was not only
irrational, but unreasonable--that somehow the election last November
didn't matter; that somehow a faction of one party in one House in one
branch of this great government could say: If you don't give us our
way, we are going to turn out the lights, and we are going to cut the
power. So it was about blowing up ObamaCare.
Now it is not about that anymore. I listened with interest this
morning as the Republicans in the House of Representatives spoke about
what this is about, and it is not clear to me at this point what it is
about. What is it that is the problem? Because it is not ObamaCare
anymore. Is it entitlement reform? Is it a grand bargain? Speaker
Boehner walked away from one of those not too long ago.
Is it about how much we are spending? We have been asking for a
conference on our budget. For years, we were getting political
criticism over the fact that the Senate had not passed a budget. So we
stayed up all night, took dozens and dozens and dozens of votes, and
passed a budget. Then we asked to go to conference. For month after
month after month, the junior Senator from Texas and others blocked our
ability to go to conference and talk about the budget.
So I don't even understand at this moment what this is about. It is
not about ObamaCare anymore. Is it about reforming Medicare and Social
Security? That is not clear. Is it about how much money we are
spending? That is not even clear.
It feels as though we are boxing shadows.
I am really hopeful about my colleagues across the aisle in the
Senate, many of whom I have worked with on many different issues and a
lot of whom I have worked with on bringing down spending. My colleague
from Alaska said we cut our deficit in half last year. It is a good
thing we are spending less money. Most of us here think we should
continue in a thoughtful way to spend less money. It is my hope that my
colleagues who rejected--the majority of my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle rejected the effort of the junior Senator from Texas
to say, ``Us too,'' to the goal that was irrational and unreasonable,
shutting down ObamaCare. Those Senators who knew this was not a game
that should be played, I am hopeful they will help us reach a
resolution that will not only allow the government to reopen but allow
us to quit playing the very dangerous game of saying to the rest of the
world that we are not the United States of America; that we are not the
grandest and most glorious democracy ever created; that we are
dysfunctional deadbeats. If it gets to be Thursday and we have not
gotten this wrapped up, the rest of the country is going to see this
democracy as dysfunctional--a democracy that so many other countries
have tried to copy and emulate because we have always managed to work
it out. To me that is the saddest part of this whole thing, that we are
actually playing around with the essence of what makes our country
great, and that is our democracy, our ability to compromise, our
ability to negotiate, our ability to not throw tantrums and say we
either get our way or we shut the place down.
And the phoniest argument of all that is being made, the most
disingenuous, misdirected reason we have gotten is this notion that
somehow this is
[[Page S7454]]
all about if we would just stop the congressional exemption under
ObamaCare. Members of Congress and their staffs are the only people in
America who are required to shop on the exchange. Let me say it again.
Members of Congress and their staffs are the only people who are
required to shop on the exchange. The only issue here is whether or not
we get an employer contribution. That is the only issue.
Every Republican in my State who works for the State government gets
an employer contribution. Every Republican who serves in Congress from
my State gets an employer contribution. They do it right now; they get
that employer contribution. If it is so immoral, if it is so bad to get
an employer contribution, give it up. Step up, set the example. Set the
example, Say, ``No more employer contribution. It is evil.'' Until they
step up and give up their employer contribution, I think it is beyond
offensive that they would threaten the young lady who answers my phone
with her employer contribution or the young man just out of school with
a heavy debt load who thought he was going to get an employer
contribution when he came to work for the Senate, who lives in
Columbia, MO, and doesn't make a huge amount of money.
You do not come to work for the government if you want to get rich.
You come to work for the government if you want to serve. The notion
that for political purposes we are threatening the employer
contribution of the people who work in our offices is, frankly, about
as low as it gets. So I do not want to hear it anymore unless somebody
is giving up their employer contribution. They all can. The minute I
hear the Republicans who are advocating this position have given up
their employer contribution--right now--then we can have a discussion
that has misled the American people into thinking somehow--somehow--
this is some special deal for Congress.
Real people are getting hurt. We are not even sure what the other
side wants. We are threatening the essence of what makes America great,
which is our democracy, and we are misleading the American people in
ways that are tremendously unfair to the great people who work for all
of us across this city and, importantly, across all of our home States.
So I will continue to talk to my friends across the aisle. Even
today, on Sunday, all of us are having these conversations. It is my
understanding our friends down the hall in the House of Representatives
went home. We are having conversations. One week ago I do not think the
Speaker could utter a sentence without saying the word
``conversation.'' We are having conversations today. I hope they will
continue into the night and that tomorrow will be a better day for this
democracy that we all like to brag about but we are threatening to blow
up.
Thank you.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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