[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         SHUTTING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT FOR IDEOLOGICAL PURPOSES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Farr) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to take a few moments and 
put some of this in perspective. I've been here 18 years now, and I've 
seen a lot going on in government, and I've had the experience in the 
State legislature and also in local government before getting here.
  This is nothing but a ploy to shut down the government for 
ideological purposes. It has nothing to do with running the greatest 
Nation on earth and trying to be a responsible government, trying to 
teach democracy to countries around the world, that if you copy our 
system you may have a freer and more open system. This is about 
shutting down the entire United States Government over use of birth 
control.
  It's also the party that has a history of shutting down government. 
The last time government was shut down it was shut down by the 
Republicans. And after they shut it down, what we did, before that, is 
we enacted taxes to pay off the debt under President Clinton. And guess 
what? That was a tough vote. Not a single Republican cast a vote for 
that. That was probably one of the greatest economic votes ever cast in 
modern Congress because it put the country back on foot. We didn't have 
a deficit. We removed it because we earmarked those taxes to pay off 
the debt.
  Along came President Bush. The first thing he did was repeal all 
those taxes. The question was, well, how are you going to pay for this? 
Oh, no, no. We don't have to pay for this. Well, Mr. President, you are 
about to go into a war. How are you going to pay for that? We don't 
have to pay for it, we'll just put it on the credit card.
  They came up with a great plan to give senior citizens Medicare drug 
reimbursements but instead of using the Medicare program, no, they 
invented another one. They gave the money to the pharmaceutical 
companies and said, you take care of the poor, charity work. And guess 
what, it won't cost you anything. Well, it cost us a lot of money. And 
when asked, how are you going to pay for it? We'll put it on the credit 
card.
  The fact is this huge deficit we got into was driven through by the 
party now that wants to shut down government, the party that has shut 
down government in the past, the party that keeps not wanting 
government to work.
  You took an oath of office when you came here, an oath to uphold the 
Constitution. That Constitution is based on, if you look around this 
room, the lawgivers, people of history who've done incredibly bold 
things.
  Our Constitution is incredibly bold. There's nothing in that 
Constitution that says that your job in Congress is to make the rich 
richer and the poor poorer.

                              {time}  1140

  And that's exactly what their budget is doing, their strategy is 
doing, and now the shutdown of government. They're gleeful about it. 
And it's a very, very sorry state that we have to, in these modern 
times, think that the greatest country in the world has to deal with 
shutting down government. That's the last thing we ever came here to 
do. It's a sorry state.

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