[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5148-5152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET DIFFERENCES

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, the responsible leaders in Washington are 
working hard to find a compromise to fund the government through the 
end of the year. Regrettably, however, many Republicans in the House--
spurred on by tea party radicals--are still threatening to throw a 
temper tantrum and shut down the government if they don't get all of 
their demands. This morning, the Washington Post reports that Speaker 
John Boehner received an ovation from the Republican caucus when he 
told them he had directed the House Administration Committee to prepare 
for a shutdown, as Congressman Mike Pence, former head of the 
Republican Policy Committee, shouted at a tea party rally last week, 
``Shut it down!''
  So it seems what we are confronting is kind of a monolithic House 
driven by the tea party vigilantes, as I refer to them, to brook no 
compromise. They want it all their way or they are going to shut down 
the government.
  Republicans are seizing on the budget crisis as a pretext for ramming 
through their longstanding ideological wishes. In Iowa, Wisconsin, 
Ohio, and elsewhere Republicans are using the budget crisis as the 
pretext for an assault on public sector unions and their hard-working 
teachers, firefighters, prison guards, and others. On Capitol Hill 
Republicans are using this crisis to try to defund health care reform, 
to gut Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and, yes, to cut tax 
rates even more deeply for the wealthiest in our society. This tea 
party budget is an unprecedented assault on the middle-class and 
working Americans. It would drive down our American standard of living, 
shred the economic safety net, reduce access to health care and higher 
education, and do grave damage to our public schools and our ability to 
prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future.
  Let's be clear. This is not about reducing budget deficits. 
Republican Governors and Republicans in Congress are demanding budget 
cuts for the middle class. At the same time, they continue to push for 
tax cuts for large corporations and the wealthy. So call it what it is. 
Republicans are waging a class warfare in America. Republican Governors 
have the gall to attack teachers and firefighters, police officers, and 
other public employees.
  In the words of Indiana Governor Daniels, he called them ``the 
privileged elite.'' Think about that. Our teachers, our firefighters, 
prison guards, and others who are public union members are the 
privileged elite in our society according to Governor Daniels.
  Why are they the privileged elite? Well, I guess because they 
actually have pensions. They actually have access to decent health 
care, and they are making decent wages with decent working conditions. 
That is the privileged elite. I guess now the middle class are people 
who are working for minimum wage at McDonald's, with no health care, no 
pensions, no retirement, and not enough to support their families. I 
guess that is the new middle class in America, but the privileged elite 
are those who have pensions, access to health care, and decent wages.
  This is the worst kind of demagoguery against loyal and hard-working 
public servants, our friends, and our neighbors. We shouldn't be 
dragging people down because they have a middle-class life. We should 
be working every day to give every American that opportunity.
  Meanwhile, as the Republicans at the State and national level go 
after the health care, retirement, and security of middle-class 
Americans, they are going all out to pass more tax cuts for the

[[Page 5149]]

wealthy. The Republican Governor in Michigan called for a $1.8 billion 
cut in corporate taxes. Wisconsin Governor Walker has called for $200 
million in cuts. In Congress, just a few months ago, in December, 
Republicans demanded and got hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax 
cuts largely, again, for the wealthy.
  Now, House Republicans--the tea party-driven House Republicans--are 
demanding we reduce the top tax rate for high earners. Get this, reduce 
the top tax rate for high earners from 35 percent down to 25 percent, 
preserving every penny of the tax breaks given to the wealthy back in 
2001. All of these tax cut proposals will make deficits far worse. So, 
again, this whole battle we are talking about is not about deficits. 
Indeed, the tax cuts congressional Republicans secured in December will 
add, according to CBO, $354 billion to the deficit just this year and 
even more next year.
  Early this year House Republicans voted to repeal the health reform 
law which would add $210 billion to the deficit over the next decade 
and over $1 trillion in the decade to follow. Now, again, that is the 
savings CBO said would come about because of the health reform bill we 
passed. Yet these same Republican politicians in the House and around 
the country are claiming to be worried about the deficit.
  Well, I think this demagoguery is not fooling anyone any longer. It 
is not about deficit reduction; it is about ideology. Republicans are 
taking a meat ax to programs for the middle class--everything from 
cancer research to Pell grants to health care. They are gutting the 
safety net started and built up over generations, starting with 
President Franklin Roosevelt. It is the same old Republican game plan: 
give huge, unaffordable tax cuts to the wealthy and give budget cuts to 
the middle class and the most vulnerable in our society, including 
seniors and people with disabilities.
  This new tea party Republican budget proposal gives new meaning to 
the word ``extreme.''
  Look at what they have proposed. The new budget that has just come 
out on the House side would basically eliminate Medicare as we know it. 
It would create a new voucher program with seniors in the future paying 
out of pocket for many lifesaving health care costs. Estimates are that 
this would raise premiums and cut benefits of over 25 million seniors.
  It is a massive giveaway to private insurers, a system that CBO--the 
Congressional Budget Office--tells us is much more expensive and, we 
know, less efficient than Medicare. By design these vouchers would not 
keep up with rising health care costs, so they would lose value every 
year with seniors paying the difference or ending up uninsured. Again, 
the assault on Medicare is a transfer of wealth from the middle class 
to insurance companies and their shareholders, their stockholders.
  The House budget would reopen the prescription drug doughnut hole 
requiring seniors to pay $3,600 a year more for prescription drugs. 
They propose to block grant Medicaid and cut $1 trillion in health care 
services which would end vital services that seniors and disabled 
Americans depend on such as coverage for nursing homes or home health 
agencies by shifting the cost to the States. This would worsen State 
budget deficits and lead to higher property taxes. Seventeen Governors 
sent a letter to congressional leaders opposing this, saying it would 
shift costs and risks to States. States would be forced to bear all 
costs after hitting the annual cap just as the baby boom generation is 
entering the retirement years with likely steep increases in their 
health care and long-term care costs. The ensuing funding shortfall 
would leave States with an untenable choice between increasing taxes, 
cutting other State programs or cutting eligibility, benefits or 
provider payments.
  That is a letter 17 Governors sent to the President.
  I remind my colleagues that Republicans complained bitterly in the 
last Congress when we approved support for the States to maintain 
health programs for the poor in the recent recession--a level of 
support the Republicans are now trying to slash in the States. The 
House budget would put future seniors in the same budget fight, and the 
Republican budget proposal doesn't stop at dismantling the safety net 
and programs that the seniors rely on for a secure retirement. It makes 
profound and destructive cuts to the entire range of programs that 
underpin the American middle-class standard of living--everything from 
education, student grants, loans, law enforcement, clean air and clean 
water, food safety, biomedical research, highways, bridges, and other 
infrastructure--in short, all the programs and services Americans rely 
on for a decent way of life.
  The Republican assault on the middle class is breathtaking, both in 
the scope and in its depth. It cannot come at a worse time for working 
Americans, who are already under enormous strain and fear that the 
American dream is slipping away.
  It is no secret people are working longer and harder than ever 
before, but they still can't meet the cost of basic, everyday needs 
such as education, transportation, housing, and health care, let alone 
put away enough money to support themselves in old age.
  Even before the great recession, during boom times, working people 
weren't sharing in our Nation's prosperity. Real wages peaked in the 
1970s, and they have not moved since. Think about this. Real wages, 
accounting for inflation, are about where they were in 1979. Think 
about that. The middle class in America has not made any headway since 
1979. We wonder why people are upset. They see the middle class way of 
life slipping away from them and their children.
  I don't think we can say the wealthiest 400 or 500 people in America 
are at the same place they were in 1979--not at all. In fact, in the 
mid-1970s, the top 1 percent of Americans, in terms of wealth, had 
about $8 trillion in assets. Today, that same 1 percent has over $40 
trillion in assets. It is not the same as where they were in 1979.
  The top 1 percent has seen their income soar. Last Friday, our 
colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, was on the floor, and 
he had some very startling statistics. He pointed out that the 400 
highest income earners in America earn an average of $344 million a 
year. Got that? They earn an average of $344 million a year, and they 
paid an effective tax of 16.7 percent. The average person working 
around here--the police we see here, the janitors, the food service 
workers, and others in the Capitol--do you know what they pay? They are 
probably paying 29, 30 percent of their income in taxes. But the 400 
highest income earners only paid 16.7 percent. We wonder why people 
think things aren't quite on the up and up or quite fair.
  Do you detect people who are just kind of feeling uneasy about where 
this country is headed? People are profoundly anxious about the future, 
but look at what the House Republicans are doing. They are going to 
make it worse on the middle class. People are worried they will not be 
able to have a decent house or enough food for their families or pay 
for their kids' college education. People are working harder, and they 
don't even take vacations any longer because they can't afford it.
  If we learned anything from the great recession, it is that most 
families, even though solidly in the middle class, are one pink slip 
away from economic catastrophe. Everybody keeps talking about a 
recovery. Many of our friends and neighbors aren't seeing that. 
Corporate America is sitting on over $1 trillion in cash, while 14 
million Americans are out of work. That is just the official number. 
That is not counting another 15 million who are underemployed or who 
have quit looking for jobs because they have been shut out of the job 
market.
  This doesn't look like a real recovery to me. It is a repeat of the 
last recession, when the recovery went to the wealthiest and the 
working people were left behind. Republicans have proposed a budget 
that will destroy the middle class in this country. That is what the 
Republican budget is about.
  Many Republicans apparently believe that as public sector workers and 
others lose their jobs, it will be somehow

[[Page 5150]]

good for the economy. Two weeks ago, the Republican staff on the Joint 
Economic Committee released a report arguing that widespread layoffs 
would actually increase jobs. How about that for funny reasoning?
  As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out, this is a 
throwback to the thinking of Depression-era Treasury Secretary Andrew 
Mellon, the idea that by driving down wages and benefits, we will 
increase employment. This is now ``the official doctrine of the GOP,'' 
he points out. If we drive down wages and benefits, we will somehow 
increase employment. I suppose we could. I suppose if we got everybody 
down to working for $1 an hour, there might be a lot of jobs out there.
  The idea is not a job. It is not just having someone work. The idea 
is to have a good job. I have pointed out in speeches in the past that, 
when we think about it, in our sordid history of America, every slave 
had a job. Think about that. Every slave had a job. Were they free? 
Were they happy? Did they keep their families together? Were they able 
to build up a middle-class nest egg? Did they have decent retirement 
and health care? No. But they had a job. Is that all we are after is 
just a job? It seems to me that we are after jobs that pay decent 
wages, with decent working conditions, and allow people to have time 
with their kids and their families.
  What is wrong with having a job that has a decent wage and decent 
working conditions and you get to take a decent vacation and you have 
health care coverage and you have a pension for your old age? What is 
wrong with that kind of a job? These are the kinds of jobs we want for 
Americans--not just a job. But the Republican philosophy seems to be 
just a job. Forget about the pension and your standard of living, just 
be thankful that you have a minimum-wage job. That is where this 
Republican budget is driving us.
  I could not help but think about this in terms of what is happening 
in the world--in Libya and what happened in Egypt and in Syria and in 
Yemen and what is happening in other places around the globe. When 
stripped away from all of it, it seems to me that in all these 
countries, people are saying we have had enough of a system where a few 
at the top get everything and nobody else gets anything and we are all 
at the bottom. In so many of these countries, these revolutions are 
going on so people can have a more decent life, a better share, if you 
will, of the products of their own society. So they are going in the 
direction of trying to establish a better middle class, a stronger 
middle class.
  What are we doing in America, the bastion of middle-class virtues. We 
are going in the other direction. We are destroying the middle class, 
taking away the kinds of livelihoods that built the middle class. That 
is what this is about. The future of our Nation depends on our ability 
to ensure that the benefits from economic growth are widely shared. 
That means putting policies into place that build a strong and vibrant 
middle class, with good jobs, fair wages, and good benefits. That is 
the America I want to see, one where people who work hard and play by 
the rules can have a decent life.
  Tragically, the tea party budget plan would take us in exactly the 
opposite direction. It would gut the whole range of programs that 
support the middle class in our country. It would dismantle the safety 
net that has been built for seniors, those with disabilities and the 
low income--a safety net created under President Roosevelt and has been 
strengthened since.
  The Republican tea party budget is built on bad priorities, bad 
policies, and just plain bad values.
  As columnist E.J. Dionne points out, Americans can now see ``how 
radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to 
which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the 
have-nots and the have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.''
  I don't believe the American people will stand for this unwise, 
unbalanced, unfair assault on their economic security and their way of 
life. We must stand strong and oppose these grossly misguided proposals 
in every way we possibly can. This is a battle that is joined and we 
cannot be faint of heart or weak in spirit. We must stand strong for 
middle-class values and what allowed America to become a strong middle-
class nation. I believe the American people are definitely on our side 
in this battle.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, what is the order?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate is in morning business.
  Mrs. BOXER. Is there any time limit on Senators?
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Ten minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent that I be given an additional 10 
minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about the 
possibility of a government shutdown and to say that such an 
alternative will be very hurtful for the people of this country. I was 
here when the government was shut down before by another Republican 
Speaker, and I can tell you that my small businesspeople around 
Yosemite National Park, for example, who count on tourism still 
remember the sting of losing over $200 million because people had to 
cancel their trips. That is one example.
  I know Superfund site cleanups were halted in their tracks. We had 
issues at the borders. We had a whole series of problems. It seems to 
me it is a reckless way to go, but it also seems to me the House 
Republicans want us to have a government shutdown.
  Why do I say that? I say that because Republicans gave the Speaker of 
the House an ovation when he informed them ``to begin preparing for a 
possible shutdown.'' An ovation. I would hope we would reserve our 
ovations for our leaders when they tell us that because of our work in 
funding the National Institutes of Health, we now have a cure for 
cancer. I would like to have an ovation about that.
  I would like to have an ovation for our firefighters and our first 
responders who are brave every single day. I would like to have an 
ovation for them.
  I do not think having an ovation because we might have a government 
shutdown is appropriate, but it was an honest response. That is what 
they want. One has to ask why. Why do they want this? Because they want 
to cut $100 billion from the President's budget, when Democrats have 
already agreed to meet them with $73 billion in cuts?
  There are three parties to these negotiations: the President, who is 
a Democrat; the Senate, which is Democratic; and the House, which is 
Republican. Since when does one-third represent a majority? Since when 
is one-third allowed to say: My way or the highway? Apparently, that is 
what they are doing.
  They put H.R. 1 before the House that has all these cuts--but not 
just cuts, political vendettas attached, such as zeroing out funds for 
Planned Parenthood. Nothing to do with abortion funding because we 
cannot use Federal funds for that, but the other work of Planned 
Parenthood in preventing unwanted pregnancies, the work they do to 
ensure people can have contraception, the work they do to make sure 
there is not a spread of communicable diseases sexually transmitted. 
The work they do--and, yes, no matter what the rightwing says, to do 
breast cancer screenings.
  There was a big article in the paper: Senator Boxer is spreading a 
big lie that Planned Parenthood does breast cancer screenings. They do 
breast cancer screenings. Although, I understand, one of their clinics 
does mammograms,

[[Page 5151]]

they definitely say to someone, if they find a suspicious lump in that 
breast cancer screening, they will help people get the help they need.
  They do Pap smears. They make sure they talk about the dangerous 
spread of HIV/AIDS. Five million people go to those clinics. They want 
to shut them down.
  They want to shut down title X--the whole program--which is family 
planning. On the one side, they do not want abortions. Nobody does. On 
the other side, they turn their backs on family planning. This does not 
make sense. That is what was in H.R. 1.
  Also, in my State, $700 million would have been cut in Pell grants, 
which meant 1 million California students who rely on these grants 
could no longer rely on them and, therefore, would have to drop out of 
college. That is what was in H.R. 1. That is what they want us to 
accept.
  Head Start--everybody knows Head Start. It is a success story. The 
fact is, H.R. 1 would slash it by $1.1 billion and would lay off 55,000 
teachers and staff and more than 218,000 low-income children would be 
cut from the program. In my State, 24,000 low-income kids would lose 
access to Head Start. They are doing all this while they are giving 
huge tax breaks to the billionaires. It is wrong.
  They would cut community health care centers--457,000 Californians. 
That is a big number. There are some States that have fewer than that. 
But 457,000 Californians would lose their health care if they went to 
community health care centers. Twelve centers would close. Why on Earth 
would anyone want to do it? They want to do it. We can figure out other 
ways to get to those cuts. There are other ways to do it.
  What amazes me is that Democrats are the ones who balanced the budget 
with Bill Clinton. We took deficits as far as the eye could see and 
turned them around, balanced the budget, and created surpluses. Now we 
are being lectured that if we do not do it the exact way our friends 
want, which is to hurt children and education and environmental 
protection and, by the way, safety issues, such as making sure our 
airplanes do not develop holes in them, an important point, they go 
after all of this.
  There are cuts to afterschool programs. That breaks my heart because 
I know 11,000 kids in California would be shut out. We all know kids 
need help after school. If they are alone, they get in trouble. If they 
get in trouble, it costs us money. These cuts are ridiculous.
  We can sit together and work together and do it in a much more fair 
way, if people pay their fair share. If everybody takes a little bit of 
a nick, we can get there. We have shown them how to get to $73 billion 
worth of cuts. That is just for the next 6 months. They are demanding 
$100 billion, their way or the highway. This is a ridiculous situation 
to be in.
  I am going to say again, if you control one-third of the power in 
this trio where you have the President is a third, the Senate is a 
third, and the House is a third, and you are in the House and you are 
the only one run by the Republicans, by what measure do you have the 
right to say my way or the highway? I don't think the American people 
would think that is right. They want us to work together and that is 
the message of the President.
  I have to tell you, this budget by the Republicans, H.R. 1, that we 
voted down here, would lead to nearly 900 fewer Border Patrol agents 
nationwide. Everyone wants to make sure our border is safe. Nine 
hundred would be gone. How about a $1.3 billion cut in the National 
Institutes of Health, working as they are to develop new treatments and 
cures for cancer and Alzheimer's? If you ask the average family what 
they fear, they will mention we fear that somebody in our family is 
going to suffer from one of these diseases.
  It is outrageous. They are going to kill an Energy Department loan 
program when we know we cannot be dependent on foreign oil. We need to 
find those alternatives. Energy research and development is slashed by 
almost $2 billion. Transportation infrastructure is slashed. There are 
Draconian cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency.
  And then all these riders. There are a whole bunch of them, as I know 
you are aware, on the Environmental Protection site. Here is the irony. 
The Republicans want to destroy the EPA, which was created by Richard 
Nixon, a Republican President. Former Administrators of the EPA 
Ruckelshaus and Whitman wrote a beautiful op-ed in the Washington 
Post--I believe it was the Washington Post, or the Times, I am not sure 
which--in which they clearly say this is a bipartisan matter. Yet the 
Republicans, in H.R. 1, want to stop the EPA from enforcing the clean 
air law, which will make our skies dirtier. Our kids will get asthma, 
premature deaths, and all the rest. Big surprise, we voted it down 
here. It only got 44 votes. It is radical. We can meet them way more 
than halfway--we already have--without hurting our people and still 
getting the budget cuts we need.
  I am here to say it has now been 35 days, 35 days since the Senate 
passed S. 388. What is S. 388? S. 388 says, if there is a shutdown, 
Members of Congress and the President will not receive their pay. Why 
do I think this is important? Because most people do not know that, 
although our staffs will not get paid, although many Federal employees 
will not get paid, Members of Congress have a special protection built 
in because we are paid under a statute and so is the President. So 35 
days ago we sent over to the House a very simple bill. It said if there 
is a shutdown, basically that means failure on our part to keep the 
Government going--what could be more basic than that--we should not get 
paid and we should not get paid retroactively. Our colleagues over 
there have taken no action.
  If you ask them, they will say: Yes, we did, we put that in another 
bill and passed it. You know what the other bill is? The other bill is 
an illegal bill. The other bill would make our Founders roll over in 
their graves. This is what the bill they embedded ``no budget, no pay'' 
in says. Follow me--and I especially hope the young people listening to 
this debate will follow me because you have learned how a bill becomes 
a law.
  It goes through a committee usually. It doesn't have to. It goes to 
one House, they pass it; the other House passes it; so you get the 
House and the Senate, and then it goes to the President. He either 
signs it or vetoes it. If he signs it, it is law. If it is vetoed, two-
thirds can override it.
  Guess what, they put ``no budget, no pay'' into a bill that says the 
following: If the Senate has not acted by a date certain on H.R. 1, 
this horrible bill that I talked to you about, that bill will have been 
deemed to be the law. It is a new deal: ``we deem.'' In other words: I 
have 20 bills that I have introduced, today I deem them law. I have 
some great bills. One is a Violence Against Children Act, very 
important. Another would help many of my transportation folks. I deem 
them all law.
  How is that legal? It is illegal. They are saying if we do not act on 
H.R. 1, again, it is deemed the law. It doesn't even pass the smell 
test, the laugh test, and they have embedded in it ``no budget, no 
pay.'' So, big surprise, we are not going to pass it over here in that 
form.
  I am saying this is a maneuver, and a little dance by Speaker Boehner 
and Eric Cantor, who is the leader over there, to make it look as 
though they are not for them getting their pay but to do nothing about 
it.
  Let me tell you what I have done. I have written a letter. It has 
many colleagues on it. I will read the letter. We are sending it by the 
end of business tonight.

       Dear Speaker Boehner:
       We write to discuss a meeting with you to discuss House 
     passage of S. 388, legislation to prohibit Members of 
     Congress and the President to prevent any Members of Congress 
     from receiving pay. Over 1 month has passed since the Senate 
     unanimously passed our bill. Despite written requests for 
     immediate House consideration, you have failed to schedule a 
     vote on stand-alone legislation that would treat Members of 
     Congress and the President no differently from other Federal 
     employees during a shutdown. Our bill is simple. If we cannot 
     do our work and keep

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     the Government functioning, we should not receive a paycheck. 
     If we can't compromise and meet each other halfway, then we 
     should not get paid.

  As we noted in a previous letter, while appearing on the CNN program 
``Crossfire'' in 1995, Mr. Boehner offered his support for a bill 
identical to S. 388, so it is unclear why he has not scheduled a vote 
on stand-alone legislation. Embedding ``no budget, no pay'' in a bill 
that has no chance of passage isn't fooling anybody. We request a 
meeting with Speaker Boehner as soon as possible, whether in person or 
via conference call, to discuss how we can work together to immediately 
send this legislation to the President.
  Here is a bill that passed here without a dissenting vote. It is 
basically 100 to nothing. In a time when we cannot agree on the color 
of that wall, we agreed to pass this ``no budget, no pay'' legislation. 
But Speaker Boehner, who got a standing ovation--maybe it was a sitting 
ovation; it didn't say standing ovation--but he got an ovation for 
talking about preparing for a shutdown, has not done one thing to make 
sure his Members and he do not get paid in case of a shutdown.
  I think it is appalling. It is embarrassing. I am stunned. The reason 
I am pressing this is I believe that people should be treated equally. 
I believe that if they are cavalierly applauding and giving an ovation 
to Speaker Boehner when he talks about planning for a shutdown, I 
believe they want a shutdown and they have no skin in the game. They 
pay no price. They get paid.
  We had one of them over there complaining he didn't get paid enough 
money. He gets paid over $170,000. It wasn't enough money. Sorry, boo-
hoo. There are people in this government who get paid $60,000, $40,000, 
$30,000, and they are not going to get paid. Sorry.
  I am going to keep coming to this floor, 36 days, 37, 38, 39, 40--
this is just plain wrong.
  I want to say who has signed our letter. You can see it is a good 
selection of the caucus, from liberal to conservative: Joe Manchin, 
Claire McCaskill, Michael Bennet, Ben Nelson, Bob Menendez, Debbie 
Stabenow, Jay Rockefeller, Kay Hagan, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, Mark 
Warner, Sherrod Brown, Tom Harkin, Chris Coons, Jon Tester, Sheldon 
Whitehouse, and Senator Mikulski and Senator Begich. Myself and Senator 
Casey are the first two names because it happens to be our bill. It is 
the Boxer-Casey bill.
  In closing, I want to spread the word from here over to the House 
side that we are serious, those of us who signed this letter. We are 
keeping this issue in front of the American people because I assure 
you, if you walked out and asked anyone who happened to be walking down 
the street who was not involved here, who didn't work for the Federal 
Government, and you said this: In case of a shutdown because the two 
sides fail to negotiate an agreement, the only people who are assured 
of their pay would be Members of Congress and the President, what do 
you think? I think the average person would say that is wrong; they 
should pay a price. This is a basic function of theirs, to keep this 
government running, to keep this country going.
  I could tell, because I remember the last one, the pain and the hurt 
from people who wanted to get on Social Security, to veterans who 
trying to figure out their disability payments, frankly to everyone who 
calls your office or my office in deep trouble because they are having 
problems with a Federal agency, they need the help of a Federal agency, 
they want to make sure to get their Medicare taken care of, their 
Social Security taken care of, or they are contractors who have private 
employees and they are fixing the road or fixing a bridge. This is 
wrong.
  We are trying to find out exactly who would be affected, but I can 
tell you right now is not the time to lose, for example, inspectors who 
are inspecting the safety of our aircraft. I hope they would stay on, 
but we do not know.
  What about those who are inspecting our nuclear powerplants? You 
know, we have 23 reactors that are the same exact reactor as the ones 
that have these problems in Japan. We don't want to stop those 
inspections; they have to move forward. We don't want to have the USGS; 
that is, the U.S. Geological Survey, close down in the middle of making 
new earthquake maps. I care about this a lot. I have two nuclear 
powerplants that are on or near earthquake faults.
  I say to my friends on the other side, I know my message is not 
pretty to you. It is not pretty to say you don't deserve to get paid in 
case of a shutdown, but that is my message. Once the American people 
wake up to this, that we are getting paid but our staffs are not 
getting paid, I think there is going to be an outcry. So I ask the 
Speaker on behalf of all those colleagues whose names I read to take up 
S. 388 without delay. It is sitting at the desk. What does it say? 
Members of Congress and the President should not be paid in case of a 
shutdown.
  That is pretty simple.
  I know my colleagues are on the Senate floor. Let me guess, Senator 
Blumenthal and Senator Lieberman, might you be here to discuss what 
happened last night? And I am going to--since my remarks were not 
happy, I am happy to give up the floor at this time and listen to their 
remarks. I congratulate both of them on a great victory.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.

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