[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 23, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H1007-H1008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                VIRGINIA'S EIGHTH DISTRICT IS SUFFERING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Beyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, my Northern Virginia district includes more 
Federal workers--almost 87,000--than any other, and my people are 
suffering.
  This week we entered the second month of a shutdown which President 
Trump began by rejecting a Republican bill which passed overwhelmingly 
in the Senate after promising that he would, in fact, shut down the 
government.
  The undeniable fact is that if the President told Senate Republicans 
today to vote for the exact same bill they already passed, the exact 
same bill he promised to sign, then this shutdown would end. But he 
refuses to do so because his demands are unmet.
  President Trump's complaints of a crisis, Madam Speaker, are correct 
in one respect: they are a crisis for the people I represent and for 
people in every district across this country.
  The President has said many things since he promised that he would 
shut down the government, but few of his comments are directed to the 
Federal workforce. I have gotten many hundreds of calls, emails, and 
letters, and they are overwhelmingly opposed to the shutdown. They are 
about tuition they can't pay, rent, healthcare premiums, insulin and 
other drugs, and groceries.
  I am particularly concerned because so many of the folks who work in 
northern Virginia have security clearances, and the number one reason 
people are denied a security clearance is because of a financial blot 
on their record. It is the number one reason their security clearance 
is taken away. If they are late on car payments and mortgage payments, 
they can actually lose their jobs.
  I am concerned about the impact on contractors. These are the folks 
like guards at the Smithsonian or food service workers or people in 
cleaning crews. They tend to be minimum wage. They tend not to have 
savings, and often no benefits. They are not getting paid, and they 
have nothing to fall back on. All the people who serve in our 
community--waiters, dental hygienists, auto mechanics, and 
hairstylists--are seeing their ability to make money day after day 
disappear.
  President Trump says his shutdown is about making the country safer, 
but

[[Page H1008]]

that doesn't make any sense if you talk to the people who are suffering 
today. I have heard from furloughed FBI agents, air traffic 
controllers, State Department officials, workers at TSA, the Department 
of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and even Customs and Border 
Patrol, and they all vehemently oppose the shutdown.
  Madam Speaker, we all support effective border security, but keeping 
these people furloughed or making them work unpaid doesn't make us any 
safer.
  But on the positive side, as the pain has gotten worse for our 
community, I have also seen something else, which is that communities 
are coming together to make sure that no one gets left behind. Business 
after business throughout the country and throughout northern Virginia 
are helping with free sandwiches, free meals, and free services.
  Nonprofits are stepping up their efforts to meet the worsening 
conditions created by the shutdown, and government officials, 
furloughed and unfurloughed, are doing everything they can to pitch in 
and lighten the blow on their unpaid colleagues.

                              {time}  1100

  Yesterday, I was helping serve food to Federal employees at Chef Jose 
Andres' World Central Kitchen. There was a line around the block, and 
it was D.C. police officers on their lunch break who came to help 
serve.
  By the way, Madam Speaker, I think I handed out more than 300 meals, 
and not a single person said: Open up the government. Give Trump his 
wall.
  We are better than this. We are good, kind, and industrious. The 
American people don't deserve this shutdown.
  It is axiomatic that we shouldn't negotiate with hostage takers, but 
the President has taken our government hostage. If we give him what he 
wants, he may well use this tactic again and again and again.
  President Reagan said: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.''
  We say: President Trump, tear down your wall--your unreasonable 
obsession with an obsolete, medieval, ineffective way to secure our 
borders--and open up our government.

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