[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5233-5234]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        GOOD FAITH NEGOTIATIONS

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I wish to spend a moment or two talking 
about how devastating it would be for our country and for the people of 
our country if, in fact, we have a government shutdown.
  I represent Maryland, and there are a lot of Federal workers in 
Maryland. They are very concerned because it will affect them. A 
government shutdown will affect everyone in this country. It will 
affect people who depend upon their government being there to serve 
them.
  If you are depending upon a timely IRS refund check and the 
government is shut down and you need that money and are counting on 
it--it is your money--you may find out, if the government is shut down, 
there is no one to talk to and that check will be delayed.
  If you are a person who is entitled to Social Security disability 
payments and you have a case that is pending, there will not be people 
there to resolve that case and you will have to wait. That could also 
very well affect your ability to literally pay your bills.
  If you are doing research at NIH--cutting-edge research--which 
depends upon the continuity of the work in order to discover the 
answers to many of the problems we face in health care, that will be 
disrupted if we have a shutdown of the government.
  The bottom line is, everyone loses if we have a shutdown of our 
governmental body. The taxpayers lose. Study after study shows that a 
shutdown of the government will actually cost the taxpayers more money. 
It makes no sense at all. Yet there are some in the House who say: 
Look, bring on a shutdown. They are not negotiating in good faith. They 
are saying it is our way or the highway. Basically, they want to shut 
down the government.

[[Page 5234]]

  We need to negotiate in good faith. It is not going to be what the 
Democrats or the Republicans want. That is how the system works. You 
have to negotiate in good faith. I know our leaders are doing that. I 
urge all of us to understand the consequences of a shutdown and make 
sure we take steps to negotiate in good faith and have a budget 
agreement completed by Friday of this week.
  I want my colleagues to understand why people in my State should be 
very concerned about the budget that passed the House of 
Representatives--the Republican budget. It would hurt children on Head 
Start. In Maryland, 1,795 children who are on Head Start would lose 
their ability to go to that program. You know how important that is. 
For students in Maryland, they would find that their Pell grants would 
be reduced by almost $700. Women would be hurt by the loss of essential 
preventive health services. Families would be at risk with the lack of 
enforcement of our regulatory bills that protect us on public health 
issues. The list goes on.
  It has been estimated that 700,000 jobs would be lost if the House 
budget became real. That would jeopardize our recovery. As you know, we 
are just starting to see job growth. We certainly don't want to take 
counterproductive steps in that recovery.
  As we pointed out many times, the budget the House sent over is 
concentrating on 12 percent of Federal spending. We need to broaden 
this discussion, and we all understand that. It starts with allowing 
the political system to work and for us to get together and reach an 
agreement for the budget that is already 6 months--we are talking about 
the last 6 month's budget.
  In Maryland, if the House budget were to pass, Metro would lose $150 
million. This is the Nation's transit system. People would find that if 
the transit system can't operate, the roads will be more congested and 
it will take a lot longer to commute.
  My point is this: The House budget--the Republican budget--is not 
going to become law. It is not what the Republicans want or what the 
Democrats want. We have to come together, and we are doing that. But 
let's not allow a minority in the House to tell us we are not going to 
let the system work for the best interests of the American people.
  I think, though, we should be very concerned about whether this is 
part of a plan with the Republicans, when we look at their budget for 
next year, the 2012 budget, which was released this week. There are 
disturbing signs as to what their intentions are. We saw it with the 
budget for this year and now we see that continued for their budget for 
next year. They literally want to turn the Medicare system into a 
voucher program, where seniors have to rely on private insurance 
companies. We tried that before Medicare. In the early 1960s, the 
number of seniors who could not get health care insurance was 
staggering. Why? Because private insurance companies are not interested 
in insuring people who make claims. The older you are, the more you 
will make claims on our health care system. If seniors are at the mercy 
of private insurance companies, it will be much more expensive for 
them, and they will not get adequate protection.
  We should all be concerned about the budget that was brought out this 
week. The Medicaid system that protects our most vulnerable, our 
seniors, who rely, in large part, on the Medicare system to deal with 
long-term care and nursing care--the Republican budget would transfer 
that to the States with a block grant, making it unlikely to see the 
continuation of the program that is critically important, not just to 
people who are vulnerable, but if they have to rely on the use of 
emergency rooms to get care, it will be more expensive for all of us.
  These short-term so-called budget savings will turn into long-term 
costs for our country. The Republican budget continues to do these 
domestic discretionary cuts--well beyond what we need as a nation to 
grow--taking, again, our most vulnerable, those who depend on 
government, making a college education more expensive and denying young 
people the opportunities they need.
  Guess what is missing in the Republican budget. There is no effort to 
deal with the revenue problems of America. I say there is a better way 
to do this, and there are 64 Senators who have come together and said: 
Look, we have to deal with our national debt with a credible budget 
plan--a credible budget plan that starts with discretionary spending 
cuts, and we all agree to that. We have to reduce military spending and 
deal with mandatory spending, but we have to also deal with the revenue 
side. Thirty-two Democrats and 32 Republican Senators said that.
  The Republican budget in the House doesn't take us down that path. It 
is not a credible plan for dealing with the budget deficit that can 
pass and be enacted and give confidence not only to the financial 
markets in America but around the world and tell the American people it 
puts their interests first.
  I want my colleagues to understand we don't want to jeopardize the 
recovery. We want to get our budget into balance, and we have to get 
this year's budget behind us. We have to deal with that. President 
Obama is right when he said in the State of the Union Address that we 
have to beat our competition. We have to outeducate, outinnovate and 
outbuild them and we have to do it in a fiscally responsible way. We 
can do that now if we work together and deal with the budget we are 
currently in, which ends September 30 of this year, in a fiscally 
responsible way. Let's get this done and move on and work together for 
the sake of our Nation.
  I am convinced that if we work together, we can have a responsible 
plan and we certainly should not allow a minority in the House to block 
a budget resolution for this year, causing the government shutdown. 
That is the worst case for the American people.
  I urge my colleagues to continue to work together so we can keep the 
government operating, reduce the deficit, and allow America to grow and 
compete and meet the challenges of the future.
  With that, 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.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. 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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