[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14832-14848]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. NELSON. As I understand what the majority leader has just done, 
the Senate has appointed conferees on the farm bill. That is an example 
that when there is a political will, we can get together and get things 
accomplished.
  The National Institutes of Health, NASA, and all of the intelligence 
agencies--72 percent of all the civilians in the intelligence agencies, 
including the CIA, are furloughed. We are in a war with those people 
who are trying to do harm to us. We are having these people furloughed 
all because of a small group, the tea party, in one House of one branch 
of government who are intent on their agenda. It is irresponsible and 
reckless.
  The truth is, if the Speaker would just bring up what we call the 
continuing resolution, which is all of the appropriations bills put 
together up to a date certain, November 15, it would pass 
overwhelmingly with Democrats and Republicans both voting for it, not 
the extremist small group down there, but the Speaker doesn't bring it 
up.
  What I see happening--if this lasts for more than a day or two--is 
that the American people will be so irritated and upset that their 
lives are disrupted because they can't get government services they are 
going to insist that their government open once again.
  I have an example. The fine work the people I have the privilege of 
working with and what they do for the people of my State never ceases 
to amaze me. It is not unusual when I am going into a meeting or 
airport or walking down the street when I am in the State of Florida, 
it is commonplace for people to come up and say to me: I want you to 
know that I appreciate so much what you did to help me or my mother or 
my son or my brother who is a veteran.
  When they say those things, they are talking about all of these 
dedicated people whom I have the great privilege of working with to 
help the people of our State on the day-to-day necessities of their 
daily lives, such as an emergency situation, they realize their 
passport has expired or they lost their passport or didn't get their 
veterans payment or need help getting their brother into a veterans 
hospital or something happened to their Social Security payment or they 
need information about this particular piece of legislation or they are 
concerned about somebody they saw whom they thought was doing things 
and they need them to be referenced to the correct agency on a security 
matter. It goes on and on.
  These wonderful people we have working with us--some young, some 
old--many of the ones who have been with me for years are so dedicated 
and work day and night. They work their fingers to the bone. They know 
exactly whom to call or to e-mail to get things done for people back 
home in need. We

[[Page 14833]]

know what is going to happen. When they call any one of our offices in 
Florida, they are going to get a recording of my voice, telling them 
what has happened and how all of these folks have been furloughed and 
giving them an emergency contact as the one lifeline we can provide.
  What happens next? If reasonable people were doing this, we would 
have never shut down in the first place--people who are bipartisan, who 
have some common sense, who recognize we can't have it our way all the 
time but in the best of American tradition respect the other fellow's 
point of view and then work out differences to achieve a consensus in 
order to gain a workable solution. If those kinds of reasonable folks 
had been operating, then we would never have shut down in the first 
place.
  We have heard about this over and over in the speeches today: I voted 
for, in the Budget Committee, a budget. It came out of committee and 
came to the floor. We had over 100 amendments. It took hours and hours. 
We finally passed a budget which was the outline for the appropriations 
for the next fiscal year. We passed that in the Senate 6 months ago. 
The House did the same. They passed out a budget. But when we asked to 
go to a conference committee to get agreement for working out the 
differences between the two, that small group would not let the 
conference not only not convene but even be appointed.
  I think the majority leader of the Senate will tell us we are ready 
to meet right now, but they have to open the government again. We have 
to put back to work these people who are trying to serve the American 
people and to protect the American people. Hopefully, if the American 
people hear these messages, they will get sufficiently agitated and 
insist that, once again, the crowd that has shut us down instead should 
open the government.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to call for 
an end to the senseless government shutdown and urge Members of the 
House to set aside political games for the betterment of the country.
  The American people are tired of our country being held hostage and 
our economic recovery threatened just to score political points, and 
justifiably so. There are real consequences for this irresponsibility.
  Shutting down the government for 3 or 4 weeks would reduce real gross 
domestic product by 1.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter alone, 
and a shutdown longer than 2 months would likely precipitate another 
recession.
  But my colleagues don't have to take my word for it. Here is what the 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a letter on this very topic: ``. . . 
it is not in the best interests of the U.S. business community or the 
American people to risk even a brief government shutdown that might 
trigger disruptive consequences or raise new policy uncertainties 
washing over the U.S. economy.''
  David Cote, the chief executive officer of Honeywell, stated that if 
you want to create economic disruption and uncertainty for businesses, 
then a government shutdown is a great way to do it.
  I couldn't agree more.
  The truth is we simply can't afford another self-inflicted wound to 
our economy, especially not at a time when things are finally turning 
around. We had big news in our State this month. The unemployment rate 
is down to 5.1 percent. National unemployment is at 7.3 percent. That 
is the lowest point since December of 2008. The housing market is 
bouncing back with existing home sales reaching a 6\1/2\ year high in 
August. Retail sales are up, and so far this year we have added 1.5 
million private sector jobs. We are not where we need to be, but we are 
moving in the right direction and it is clear that now is not the time 
to take a step back. Yet here we are again, right in the middle of 
another manufactured crisis.
  On Friday, the Senate passed a bill to keep the government running 
that is free of any ideological policy provisions. The Senate bill 
would fund the government at the same level as last year through 
November 15 and would give Congress and the President time to negotiate 
a balanced deficit reduction plan.
  The commonsense next step would be for the House to take up and pass 
the Senate's bill. That is democracy. They should put the bill before 
the House and, by most beliefs, it would pass and it would end the 
shutdown. Instead, the House has sent us four separate versions of the 
legislation with full knowledge that the Senate would not agree to them 
and the President stating he would veto them. Each of the House 
proposals would have delayed implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
  So here we stand with the Federal Government shut down just so the 
House Republicans could again attempt to relitigate a law that both the 
House and the Senate passed, the President signed, and the Supreme 
Court upheld.
  That doesn't mean there will be no changes to the law going forward. 
I know the Presiding Officer, the Senator from the great State of West 
Virginia, has some ideas and I have some ideas, but they must be made 
in a rational manner, not as part of poison pill partisanship.
  House Republicans don't seem to understand or they choose not to care 
about the negative impact on businesses and families that a government 
shutdown would have. Here are some examples of how my State will be 
impacted, and I know the Senator from Delaware, Mr. Coons, is here, and 
I know he has some examples as well. This is the story in Minnesota: 
According to the Small Business Administration, in 2012 their loan 
programs approved 53,847 applications and supported 571,383 jobs for an 
average of just over 1,000 applications per week. What does this mean 
for Minnesota? Well, my State is home to 115,000 small businesses, and 
I wish to ensure that the SBA loans keep coming through.
  All lands managed by the National Park Service in Minnesota would be 
closed. They are closed. These include Voyageurs National Park, the 
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, the North Country 
National Scenic Trail, the Pipestone National Monument, and the Saint 
Croix National Scenic Riverway. Closure of the parks would result in 
the loss of tourism revenue. Last year, more than 600,000 visitors 
enjoyed these parks, an average of more than 1,600 visitors per day. 
According to the National Park Service in 2011, visits to these parks 
in Minnesota contributed $37 million in economic benefits and generated 
665 jobs in my State.
  In a State such as Minnesota, where tourism is our fifth largest 
industry and the source of 11 percent of our private sector revenue, we 
simply can't afford for this to happen. We simply cannot afford for 
this critical industry to be hamstrung by political posturing.
  In the shutdown, the Food and Drug Administration will furlough 7,000 
people, roughly 55 percent of the agency's workforce. That means the 
process for approving life-saving drugs and treatments and devices--
something that matters a lot in my State--would grind to a halt, and 
shipments arriving at our ports from overseas will no longer be 
monitored by the FDA.
  The shutdown also has the potential to slow down research at the Mayo 
Clinic. The bulk of Mayo's funding for research comes from the National 
Institutes of Health grants.
  In the government shutdown, 70 percent of NIH staff is shut out, as 
Senator Mikulski has said on this floor many times, 70 percent of the 
National Institutes of Health staff. That represents about 19,000 
American scientists, researchers, and others who are working to develop 
a cure for Alzheimer's, working to develop a cure for muscular 
dystrophy, working to develop a cure for autism.
  Staff from the Mayo Clinic said if the government shuts down, the NIH 
will not be reviewing new grant proposals, and that is starting today.
  In addition, it means funding for recently approved grant projects 
won't be released, and new patients will not be admitted to the NIH 
Clinical Center or allowed to begin new clinical trials.
  We must also be willing to do the right thing for the safety of our 
people.

[[Page 14834]]

That is, all in all, in my belief as a former prosecutor, the No. 1 
duty of government--to keep our people safe. When it comes to homeland 
security, counterterrorism, and Federal law enforcement, rest assured 
those protections will continue, but in the event of a shutdown, the 
Federal officers who continue going to work protecting the public from 
violent crimes, gangs, and terrorists won't be getting a paycheck. 
Instead, they will be getting an IOU. So basically what we will be 
saying to these people, and what we are saying as of midnight last 
night, is: Thank you for putting your lives on the line but we can't 
pay you right now because there are some people in the House who want 
to delay the Affordable Health Care Act, and if you are lucky, maybe 
you will get backpay when all this is sorted out.
  My colleagues in the House like to talk a big game about how 
uncertainty is hindering real economic growth. I believe uncertainty 
hinders economic growth. So it is quite ironic that they are now 
creating this economic uncertainty and are willing to threaten our 
economy on a political gamble.
  Shutting down the government is not a negotiating tactic. If the 
House were to take up the Senate bill to fund the government, it is 
expected to pass and the shutdown would end. During that time, over the 
next 6 weeks, it will give us that time to truly negotiate a long-term 
debt deal done in a balanced way. Instead, critical services and the 
economic recovery are being threatened with poison pill partisanship.
  To my colleagues in the House and in the Senate, I say this: Let's 
get this done. We owe it to the people we were elected to serve. We owe 
it to the country. Let's end this government shutdown now.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, today is October 1. Today is the day that 
has long been known as the day when the Affordable Care Act will first 
come into force and exchanges across the country will begin to be open 
to citizens of all different backgrounds and walks of life for them to 
seek affordable, accessible insurance on these exchanges, the next step 
in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. On one level, it is a 
good day, because tens of millions of Americans are today gaining 
access to quality affordable care. I am told that since midnight, 
nearly 3 million people visited healthcare.gov, 80,000 or more have 
called a hotline, and 60,000 have requested live chats for 
applications, and enrollment in these marketplaces is moving forward at 
a record pace. So, on some level, this is an important day, because 
millions of Americans across dozens of States are getting access to 
quality affordable health care.
  On the other hand, as the Presiding Officer well knows, this is an 
embarrassing, difficult, and disappointing day. The Federal Government 
of the United States is shut down. As of midnight last night, the 
President, the Office of Management and Budget, directed all the 
different executive agencies and offices to begin shutting down. As a 
result, 800,000 Federal employees are spending today at home--not 
helping small businesses with loans from the SBA; not helping move 
forward grants that invest in improving our infrastructure; not moving 
forward federally funded research that might find a cure for cancer or 
for MS or for autism; not helping applicants get college loans; not 
helping disabled veterans get access to the benefits they earned 
through their service to our country. We could go on and on about all 
the different ways these Federal employees--these public servants--are 
today not able to help our constituents, our fellow citizens.
  I have gotten a fair number of contacts today--phone calls to my 
office, e-mails to my office, folks connecting with me on Facebook or 
through Twitter, or directly or indirectly, to convey how frustrated 
and upset they are.
  I want to try to put all of this in some context for the folks who 
might be watching. What is it we are fighting over? As best I can 
understand, a few Members of this body and a few Members of the House 
of Representatives have shut this government down in an effort to try 
to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That is what 
this is all about. They have refused to take up and pass a bill that 
would fund the continuation of the U.S. Federal Government. In so 
doing, they are doing about $10 billion a week in damage to our 
economy. They are doing all of that damage I referred to in terms of 
hundreds of thousands of Federal employees not able to help improve our 
communities or keep us safe or move our country forward.
  So why are we doing this? I think it has been said for many years 
that the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and 
over and expecting a different result. Well, the House of 
Representatives has tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act I think 42 
times now.
  As best I understand, this bill, which was passed by both Chambers 
and signed into law and then challenged at length in the Supreme Court 
and upheld and then was the central issue of the last Presidential 
election, which was not particularly close, this law of the land, which 
is moving forward in its implementation today, will not be stopped by 
shutting down the Federal Government.
  This is a strategy that never really had a serious chance of success. 
Despite very long, quasi-filibuster speeches on this floor, despite all 
sorts of public pronouncements, this strategy has no chance actually of 
working. So what is the point? Why is this Federal Government shut 
down? It seems to me that it is simply a demonstration of a temper 
tantrum, a fit by a small number of folks who promised people back home 
that they will not allow this government to go forward with the 
Affordable Care Act.
  I think what we should be doing instead is working together across 
the aisle to improve the Affordable Care Act. It is not perfect. Of 
course it has blemishes. There will be hiccups and there will be 
inconsistencies and issues that need to be worked out as this law is 
implemented. We ought to be working together across the aisle, the 
Senate and House together, to make sure it is done in an affordable, 
sustainable, and positive way rather than a small minority digging in 
their heels and imposing all of this wreckage for their own partisan 
goal.
  Let me share some of the thoughts I have gotten from folks at home 
who are not exactly happy about our having a Federal Government 
shutdown today.
  First, Ray White of Ellendale, DE, wrote:

       I am a veteran and a US government employee. The furlough 
     and sequester we already went through back in August of this 
     year cost me 20 percent of my paycheck for over a month, 
     causing my bills to get out of control. I would like to know 
     how to make ends meet when I have no money to pay my bills, 
     and lawmakers in the Capitol want to put me out of work 
     again.

  To Ray and your family, I am sorry. I am sorry for the fact that we 
have a few folks in the House of Representatives who will not take up a 
bill to keep our government open. As the Senator from Minnesota 
recently related, if the Speaker of the House would just let that bill 
get to the floor, it would pass. There are more than enough Democrats 
and Republicans in the House to pass that bill if the House would just 
take it up. I don't think there is any question who caused this 
shutdown and why.
  CWO2 Christopher Slicer of Newark wrote me to say:

       As a federal technician and Army National Guardsman, I find 
     it ridiculous that those we have elected as our 
     representatives cannot do their jobs. If I wasn't doing my 
     job, I would be fired or reprimanded. There is no excuse. I 
     don't care which party it is for not passing whatever it is 
     that needs to be done to have a budget. For our government to 
     shut down shows how incompetent our government is to the 
     world and worse its own citizens. There are thousands of us 
     federal employees who have had to endure furloughs already, 
     and you are telling me that we may have more.

  Well, to CWO Christopher Slicer, I apologize that this Congress is 
unable to come together across this partisan divide and that we have 
another needless, manufactured crisis that just a few irresponsible 
Members insisted on to make a partisan point.

[[Page 14835]]

  I think CWO Christopher Slicer makes a particularly important point: 
that this government shutdown shows our weaknesses in our inability to 
get together across this partisan divide not just to our citizens but 
to the world. At a time of real instability and real threat to our 
national security around the world, I think this government shutdown is 
not just harmful to our communities, our families, and our economy, but 
to our country and its standing in the world.
  Last I will read, if I might, a note from Laurie Tonkay of Dover. 
Laurie wrote me to say:

       It seems like we just got through the government furloughs 
     and now there is a good chance you're going to shut down the 
     government.

  This came yesterday.

       My husband is employed with the Civil Service on Dover Air 
     Force Base. This makes it difficult for ordinary families to 
     make ends meet. I am getting discouraged with the way things 
     are being done in Washington these days. America is in debt 
     because we overspend, then you make your average hard-working 
     employees pay the price for it repeatedly.

  She concludes:

       Morale is low, and frankly, I have lost confidence in the 
     bureaucracy. I wonder if things would be different if this 
     were an election year. Would you shut the government down? I 
     think not. Show you care and get something done now.

  Well, to Laurie, I am sorry for the impact this shutdown has had on 
you and your family. But it is the result of a few irresponsible 
Members of the House of Representatives. If the Speaker would just put 
on the floor for a vote what has been passed here in the Senate, we 
would have a government reopened today and we could get back to the 
business of this country. We could get back to conference on the budget 
and make progress on investing in making our communities safer, our 
families stronger, our schools and our students better educated, and 
doing the investment in our infrastructure and research we need to move 
our economy forward.
  Let me conclude by sharing this. I have a number of wonderful folks 
on my staff who work in my offices in Delaware and in Washington whose 
real focus is constituent service. If folks call my office and they 
have a problem or an issue at home that we need to help with, they do 
an amazing job.
  One young man, Brendan Mackie, recently joined my staff. He is a two-
tour veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He works tirelessly to make sure 
the veterans who contact my office get the help they need.
  A staff sergeant recently contacted us. He was wounded in Baghdad in 
2007 by an IED. He lost the documentation for his Purple Heart. Well, 
Brendan dove right in and did all sorts of work--collected sworn 
statements and medical records, submitted everything to the relevant 
Army review board--and has managed to get his Purple Heart reissued.
  That is the kind of case work my folks do day in and day out, making 
sure that whether it is accessing veterans' benefits or disability 
benefits, Social Security, or medals earned in service to this Nation 
in combat, the men and women of Delaware who contact my office and rely 
on me and their services for great constituent support can get that 
help. Sadly, Brendan is home today and not able to serve the people of 
Delaware, not able to do his job.
  If I might, I would close by saying this: This is the latest in a 
series of manufactured crises, of completely senseless, self-inflicted 
wounds. It is up to the Speaker of the House and to the folks in the 
House of Representatives to take up and pass the bill we sent them days 
ago that would allow this government to reopen and allow the leaders of 
this Chamber and the other Chamber to move forward on dealing with the 
real issues facing our country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it appears the Republicans understand 
finally that the government is shut down, but now they are focusing on 
trying to cherry-pick some of the few parts of government they like. 
They do not like it all, but they like a few parts of it. Just another 
wacky idea from the tea party-driven Republicans. You can tell that the 
tea party Republicans still want to keep the government shut down. If 
they wanted to reopen the government, they would simply reopen the 
government by bringing the Senate's bill to their floor and letting it 
pass with a majority vote. We could reopen the government in a matter 
of minutes if Speaker Boehner had the courage to stand up to the tea 
party.
  I said the word ``we''--they.
  We support veterans and parks. We support the FBI. We support the 
Federal Government. That is our job. That is what we do. But we cannot 
and we will not be forced to choose between parks and cancer research 
or disease control or highway safety or the FBI or, as we have heard 
here today, on and on with examples from the National Security Agency, 
which has cut by more than 70 percent its personnel. The Republicans 
seem willing to fund veterans, but what about the rest of the 
government?
  First, we need to end the government shutdown and then Democrats will 
be happy to agree on funding for specific items. We would be glad to do 
that. We would be happy to agree to fund priorities as soon as Congress 
enacts legislation to reopen the government.
  The Republican plan is not a serious plan. It is not a plan to run 
the country. It is not a plan the American people sent us here to do. 
This is just as clear as the Presiding Officer seated before me--wide-
shouldered, Former Governor of West Virginia, someone who has been in 
government for many decades. It is so clear, here is what it is all 
about. They have it in words.
  Here is their plan. Some of the rabble-rousers over there have said 
what they want to do, which is take little bits and pieces of the 
Federal Government, send something over for veterans today, parks 
tomorrow, maybe security agencies tomorrow and the next day, and this 
will go on for weeks. Well, what will not get funded? ObamaCare. Now, 
it is so obvious. In fact, one of the Senators said this. In fact, I am 
paraphrasing part of this. This appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune.
  It is obvious we cannot end ObamaCare, so we are going to have a 
different approach.
  In light of the fact they cannot end ObamaCare, here is the quote: 
``In light of that, let's leave ObamaCare for another day and not hold 
hostage the vast majority of government functions.''
  The Utah Republican has claimed credit for kick-starting the effort 
to use the Federal budget as leverage to halt funding for ObamaCare--a 
move that led to the impasse and the government shutdown. So they could 
not do that, so now what they want to do is nitpick these little things 
while the government is shut down and wait until the end and there is 
nothing for ObamaCare in spite of the fact that millions of people now 
have health care today that they did not have yesterday because of the 
exchanges coming online.
  We need to reopen the government. The key to that still remains over 
in the House of Representatives. It is the Senate-passed clean bill for 
the whole government. If Republicans were serious, they would pass that 
bill. Doing anything else is just sour grapes. This is not serious. The 
government is shut down. If they think they are going to come and 
nitpick us, it will not work. It will not work.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the latest Republican proposal is a 
cynical one that pits important priorities against each other. People 
should not have to choose between health for our veterans and cancer 
research. We should not have to choose between keeping our highway 
projects going and cleaning up toxic waste areas. We should not have to 
choose between visiting our national parks and enrolling our kids in 
Head Start.
  As we said a thousand times, we are happy to discuss how to fund the 
government but not with a gun to our head. Open up all of the 
government, and then we can have a fruitful discussion.

[[Page 14836]]

  You know, it gets a little tiresome. It is game after game, gambit 
after gambit from the other side of the aisle. They keep trying new 
things, new tricks. Some of them have to do with ObamaCare, and some of 
them are unrelated to ObamaCare. They are trying as they might, Speaker 
Boehner, to wriggle out--Speaker Boehner is trying to wriggle out of 
the box in which he has put himself. On the one hand, he knows shutting 
down the government is highly unpopular and hurts America. On the 
other, he is so used to giving obeisance to the hard right that he is 
afraid not to. He is betwixt and between.
  But I will tell you, today was a bad day for Speaker Boehner and 
those who want to shut the government down. Polling data is 
overwhelming. Americans 3 to 1 support opening the government even if 
it means keeping ObamaCare going.
  Americans think that the Republican Party is being irresponsible and 
not living up to what it should be doing. Americans are telling 
Republicans in the House: Vote now. Open the government by putting a 
clean continuing resolution funding bill on the floor.
  They will have new games, but we are not going to go for them. Sooner 
or later, they are going to have to say: OK, we will fund the 
government. Then we will discuss things, but--as has been said over and 
over--not with a gun to our heads.
  Democratic unity is as strong as ever, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 
to just about every Member of the House of Representatives and to all 
54 Members of this united Democratic Caucus. This is great because it 
means that there is hope.
  The bad news about today is, of course, that many innocent people 
were hurt. There are 800,000 Federal workers who depend on paychecks to 
feed their families and they were told they can't come in to work. They 
are dedicated to their jobs. They want to come in to work. They can't 
and, of course, they are not getting paid.
  Millions more are affected as well. We had furloughs at the Niagara 
Falls Air Reserve Station in Buffalo of defense employees, many of them 
civilian. We fought hard to keep that base open. Now we are telling the 
people: Go home, you can't work today--as important as that base is to 
the security of America.
  Senator Feinstein was here earlier. Three-quarters of our 
intelligence people at the NSA are not working. That is an abstract 
concept, but it relates to every single one of us and our security.
  The idea of shutting this government down may sound good to the hard 
right in the abstract, but even when their constituents learn of what 
specifically it means, they are going to run away from that concept.
  To my colleagues, particularly from Texas, the junior Senator from 
Texas, who has evidently come up with this new plan, face it. The 
Senator is not going to get us to give in to extortion. The Senator is 
not going to take as hostage millions of innocent Americans and succeed 
in getting us to do something that he wants but we don't and they 
don't.
  I saw in the Salt Lake City paper that the junior Senator from Utah 
said: Maybe we should forget about ObamaCare and look to spending cuts.
  Well, good morning. That is what we have been saying all along. We 
may not like the spending cuts in certain areas that they proposed, but 
we are willing to discuss them. That is how a budget works, how 
appropriations works, and how our government is run. But to take an 
extraneous issue and to say unless we get rid of it, they are going to 
shut down the government, no way.
  I wish to tell my colleagues if they think they are having a rough 
time here on shutting down the government in terms of the politics, in 
terms of where people are, and in terms of their base of support, wait 
until they try to shut down the debt ceiling.
  Senator Cruz, Senator Lee, it is going to be 10 times worse. The 
dangers are even greater to America. The pressure on all of us will be 
even more severe, and that will not work either.
  I have a simple suggestion. Let's in one fell swoop fund the 
government, allow the government to pay its bills, and begin debating 
the spending issues that we should justly debate instead of putting 
America through these paroxysms because they know, we know, and the 
American people know they will not succeed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we were notified just after lunch of the 
new strategy that is coming out of the Cruz control that we are facing 
on Capitol Hill.
  It turns out that Senator Cruz is going to pick and choose those 
departments of government that he wishes to open. That's right. The 
junior Senator from Texas is going to go through his priority list of 
Federal agencies that he thinks should be open and funded.
  We closed down virtually all of them at midnight and, sadly, some 
800,000 Federal workers have been furloughed across the United States, 
some of them going home without a paycheck for as long as this goes on.
  The height of irresponsibility is that the junior Senator from Texas 
now wants to pick and choose those agencies he wishes to reopen. One of 
those agencies, not surprisingly, is the Department of Veterans 
Affairs. Of course, we owe that obligation to our veterans. They wish 
to open the Department of Veterans Affairs, but perhaps not other 
departments.
  Let me remind the Senator from Texas of a couple of realities. They 
may fund the Department of Veterans Affairs with a short-term 
appropriations bill, but this bill will not help bring back the 
paychecks of the 546,000 veterans who currently work for the Federal 
Government--546,000, over half a million.
  To help the Department of Veterans Affairs, they are ignoring half a 
million or more veterans who are Federal workers. More than one in four 
Federal workers is a veteran and more than a quarter of veterans 
employed by the Federal Government are disabled.
  The Senator from Texas is picking and choosing those veterans he 
wants to help. The disabled veterans working for our Federal Government 
are not going to get the help. Those working at the Department of 
Veterans Affairs will.
  This is the height of irresponsibility, and it is the height of 
arrogance. Then, of course, he decides, since he has heard all the 
speeches about all the national parks that have been closed, we are 
going to open the national parks. That is a good thing. I would support 
that.
  But let me ask the Senator from Texas--who is now deciding what is 
important in our Federal Government--does he think maybe the medical 
research at the National Institutes of Health is important? Does he 
think maybe the efforts that these scientists and doctors are 
undertaking to find cures for diseases, the next drug, the next medical 
device, the next surgical technique to save his life or the life of 
someone he loves is important? You bet it is.
  The list goes on and on. It is reckless for the junior Senator from 
Texas to decide: Well, OK, tomorrow veterans and national parks. Then 
maybe later on we will get around to medical research, or maybe we will 
get around to criminal administration in the Department of Justice.
  Maybe we will get around to bringing the people back to the 
intelligence agencies who are monitoring terrorists all over the world 
who threaten the United States.
  I sure hope we make the wish list of Senator Cruz when it comes to 
our national security. To think that this Senator has the nerve to try 
to decide what is really, really important for America--I will state 
what is important for America. It is important to end this 
irresponsibility and this recklessness.
  It is important to realize these are real lives and real people doing 
work for the United States of America. Using them as political pawns is 
an embarrassment. It is an embarrassment to this institution and those 
who are pushing this agenda. We know this problem can be cured and 
solved in a matter of moments.
  If Speaker John Boehner would have the nerve to put the spending bill 
that

[[Page 14837]]

passed the Senate on the floor of the House of Representatives, it 
would pass in a minute. The Speaker knows it would. That is why he will 
not call it.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. DURBIN. I yield to the Senator.
  Mr. REID. Through the Chair I say to my friend from Illinois, during 
all this prioritization that they are doing, this agency and that 
agency, the government is closed, isn't it? The government is closed.
  Mr. DURBIN. That is correct. As of midnight, the notice went out that 
the government agencies were closed. There are some that are doing 
important jobs that are absolutely essential--air traffic control, for 
example--but the agencies of government have been closed.
  Please listen to Senator Mikulski of Maryland. I wish Senator Cruz 
would come to the floor and spend a few minutes listening to her about 
the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, 
which due to this reckless strategy by the Republicans, have closed 
today. Really? Closing the doors on medical research in the United 
States of America. What a moment of great pride for the tea party to be 
able to claim they closed down the National Institutes of Health.
  Now they are going to pick and choose. Maybe it will make the list. 
Perhaps not this week but next week we will get back into the business 
of medical research. On the greatest Nation on Earth we are facing 
this. It not only makes the Nation look bad around the world, it harms 
our economy. Think about it for a moment.
  How much confidence would you have in the United States of America if 
its government is capable of shutting down, over a political squabble 
that is totally unnecessary, shutting down the government of the United 
States of America. What a source of pride for the tea party Republicans 
but not for the rest of America.
  The rest of America knows that we need to roll up our sleeves and 
solve our problems. We have to stop these doomsday scenarios, these 
threats, this irresponsible, reckless strategy from the tea party 
Republicans.
  It is time for the Speaker of the House of Representatives not only 
to lead the Republicans in the House but to be a leader for America. It 
is time for all of us to come together, to fund this government, and 
move it forward today--not tomorrow, not next week, not beyond and 
more.
  When it comes to the debt ceiling, it is the full faith and credit of 
the United States that is at stake. The question is very basic. Will 
America pay its bills?
  These same Members of Congress who voted for the spending now refuse 
to pay the bills. As Congressman Obey of Wisconsin used to say: They 
want to pose for holy pictures. Oh, yes, we voted for the spending, but 
we don't want to pay for it. We are not going to vote for a debt 
ceiling. My goodness, the word ``debt'' scares us and it may scare the 
voters.
  They would see the United States default for the very first time in 
our history on our debts, fail to make payments on our debts.
  What is the practical impact of that if families decide not to pay 
their debts, to skip a mortgage payment. They are going to meet their 
banker. They are going to call them and say: Pardon me, Senator, did 
you notice that you didn't make your mortgage payment? If you didn't 
notice, we did. It is going on your credit report. The next time you 
try to borrow money it is going to be at a higher interest rate because 
you are not very creditworthy.
  Now multiply that into a nation of more than 300 million people. The 
next time we start to borrow the money after we have defaulted on our 
debt for the first time in history, what is going to happen to 
America's credit rating? Interest rates will go up.
  Well, so what. A slight tick up in the interest rate paid by America 
for its debt consumes billions of dollars that could be spent on 
education, on research, and on building America's infrastructure. This 
is wasted money because of this wasteful strategy from tea party 
Republicans.
  Over and over Speaker Boehner has sent us these bills to defund 
ObamaCare. Why were they so desperate to stop health care reform? 
Because October 1, today, is a big, big day across America. For the 
very first time we are providing Internet access to uninsured Americans 
so they can have, maybe for the first time in their lives, a chance to 
buy health insurance. Some of them have never, ever been protected by 
health insurance. Now they may have a chance at affordable health 
insurance. In the State of Illinois, 1.8 million uninsured people get a 
chance, a chance to buy health insurance that they can afford.
  I heard at lunch today that more than 2 million people visited this 
Web site in the State of New York this morning. Do you think there is a 
pent-up demand for health insurance? It also is an indication of why 
tea party Republicans are in a fevered state over ObamaCare coming 
online.
  This is going to work. It is going to finally give peace of mind and 
health insurance protection to people who have lived a lifetime without 
it.
  I have met them, folks who have a child with diabetes, a child with a 
mental illness, a child with asthma. This is fairly common. These are 
people who can't get health insurance because some member of their 
family has a preexisting condition. ObamaCare finally wipes that off 
the slate and says they can't discriminate against people because of 
preexisting conditions. Well, you listen to Senator Cruz and others, 
and they say we want to do away with that protection.
  I hope the Senator never has to face that in his own family. Some of 
us have. And once you have faced it, you realize what a heartbreak it 
is not to be able to buy health insurance because of a preexisting 
condition of someone whom you love in your family.
  We are going to change that with ObamaCare. We are going to give 
people a chance to buy health insurance, and that is what frightens 
these Republicans--the notion, as that program takes root and grows in 
America, and people have the confidence and peace of mind of health 
insurance protection, it is going to be a program they cannot wipe away 
with the back of their hand.
  So all of the things we are seeing, the political gymnastics coming 
from Senator Cruz and the tea party Republicans notwithstanding, we 
know the bottom line is this: This is a good, strong Nation, where 
Democrats and Republicans need to work together to solve our problems 
together, not with threats, not with guns to our heads, but with a 
common purpose of serving this great Nation.
  I am troubled that now we are going to get the Senator Cruz list of 
his favorite agencies. He starts with the Veterans' Administration. Let 
him start with the Federal workforce, where over 500,000 members are 
actual veterans and a quarter of them disabled. If he really cares 
about veterans, have him call the Speaker. Let's get this government up 
and running again tomorrow. We can reflect on what happened during the 
last 24 hours if we do, but let's not continue this embarrassment to 
the United States. It is irresponsible, it is reckless, it is damaging 
to our economy and a lot of innocent people. We need to put an end to 
this government shutdown.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I regret also we are now experiencing a 
partial shutdown of our Federal Government. Through no fault of their 
own, some citizens who are visiting Washington are also being denied 
government services and access to memorials that their tax dollars 
support. I hope we can soon eliminate any inconvenience that is being 
caused by this shutdown for visitors and citizens who planned trips 
into our Nation's Capital.
  The effects of the shutdown are real and they are being felt in 
practical ways, well beyond the Nation's Capital. But certainly here in 
Washington we witnessed an example of the unintended and sometimes 
absurd consequences of the Congress and the President's inability to 
reach an agreement.

[[Page 14838]]

  Today, for example, a large group of World War II veterans from my 
State of Mississippi caught an early flight from Gulfport to Washington 
as part of the Honor Flight program. These flights allow veterans who 
might not have the ability to come here on their own to visit the 
national World War II Memorial that was built to honor their brave 
service--service that saved the world from some of the greatest evils 
ever known. Confronted with barricades, however, that were erected this 
morning around the open-air memorial, as a part of the shutting down of 
the Federal Government, the citizens from my State carefully removed 
the barriers and made a path so they were able to walk on to the 
memorial and lay a wreath beneath the memorial's Mississippi column.
  I am very pleased the visit of these veterans to Washington was not 
ruined by the government shutdown, even though there were some 
obstacles. But I hope their experience reminds all of us--Federal 
agencies, Members of Congress, and others who live here in the Nation's 
Capital--to not make this situation more difficult than it has to be 
for veterans or other visitors who are coming to the city. For some 
this may be the only time in their life they will be able to do that.
  So I take this opportunity to thank the veterans from our State for 
their calm, cool, and collected demeanor during what could have been a 
frustrating experience, and I salute all veterans for their service to 
our Nation and the access they have even on a day where the agencies 
are ``closed.'' There are certain premises that should remain open and 
available for visitation and visibility.
  I thank the Honor Flight volunteers for their calm, cool, and 
collected demeanor and their support for the freedoms of our country. I 
am sure they will all receive a very warm welcome tonight when they 
return home to Gulfport.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank the distinguished Senator 
from Mississippi for his remarks about these Honor Flight veterans. We 
just had a group come down from Rhode Island, including one gentleman 
who was 100 years old. It was so meaningful for them. In Rhode Island, 
it is particularly the fire chiefs and the firefighters who have been 
helping to organize these honor flights, and Chief George Farrell and 
others took immense pleasure and meaning out of having brought these 
gentlemen down and enabling them to have this recognition.
  The tide of time is sweeping that ``greatest generation'' into its 
dying years, and while they are still among us, it is a wonderful thing 
to do. So I thank the Senator from Mississippi for that.
  I came to the floor to, I guess, say: Welcome to tea party shutdown, 
day 1. We do not know how long this is going to go, but it is already 
having, I will say, miserable impact in Rhode Island.
  We have as many as 7,000 Federal employees facing furlough. We just 
got word that at Naval Station Newport 800 men and women have been 
furloughed. Our Rhode Island National Guard let us know they are 
anticipating 300 furloughs. These are people who work hard for our 
Federal Government. They do important jobs, particularly with respect 
to the National Guard and Naval Station Newport. They support our 
troops. It is not fair to them that the tea party extremists over in 
the House would insist on putting them out of work in order to force a 
way around the constitutional process of government here in Congress.
  The key to putting those 7,000 Rhode Islanders, the 800 Naval Station 
Newport, the 300 civilian guardsmen employees, back on the job is a 
very simple one, and it is in the hands of Speaker Boehner. All he has 
to do is call up the continuing resolution. All he has to do is take 
the measure the Senate passed and put it before the House for a vote. 
Just give it a vote. That is all it takes.
  Why does he not do that? He doesn't do that because there is this 
peculiarity over in the House called the Hastert rule. It is not a real 
rule; it is just called that. It is a practice. It is a practice named 
after former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert. The practice is that if 
your own caucus won't agree on a bill--if the Republicans, all by 
themselves in a room with no Democrats present, won't agree on a bill--
then the Speaker won't even give Democrats a chance to vote on it. It 
will never come to the floor. It is the most partisan rule or practice 
that exists in this body, in my estimation, and it has been a problem 
for the Republicans before. There have been times when Speaker Boehner 
has had to use that key he has to simply put a measure before the body 
without clearing that partisan prescreening by his Republicans. He has 
done it over and over to protect the Republican Party from itself, when 
they were going to force choices that would be terrible for the country 
and terrible for the party, ultimately.
  The first was on the fiscal cliff. Remember the hair's-breadth antics 
that led up to the fiscal cliff? Well, finally, Speaker Boehner put the 
fiscal cliff bill to a vote in the House and it passed 2 to 1. The 
Republicans voted against it in the caucus, so we know it flunked the 
Hastert rule test. But it passed the House with a bipartisan vote of 
Republicans and Democrats, and it spared us then from going off the 
fiscal cliff.
  That was the right call for the Speaker to make. It was the right 
call for the country. It was the right call for his party because they 
didn't want to own that debacle and he made a good decision at that 
time.
  The next was the Violence Against Women Act. Over and over we have 
passed the Violence Against Women Act in bipartisan fashion in the 
Senate, and it has been passed in bipartisan fashion over in the House. 
We passed it again in bipartisan fashion in the Senate, but it was 
going to fail in the House. Well, how do you go back to your voters, if 
you are a reasonable House Member, and say: We refused for the first 
time to pass the Violence Against Women Act? It came over in bipartisan 
fashion from the Senate. It had strong support here, but we refused to 
pass it.
  Well, they couldn't.
  So once again Speaker Boehner waived the so-called Hastert rule--this 
practice of having to have his caucus have a pre-veto on anything that 
comes to the floor--and he brought the Violence Against Women Act to 
the floor, and once again it passed. It passed with Democratic and 
Republican support.
  The third time was the disaster bill for Sandy. Many of our States 
were hit darn hard by Sandy. New York and New Jersey took really 
crushing blows. But the House Republicans didn't want to fund this 
particular disaster recovery. In fact, they voted 3 to 1 against it--3 
to 1 against disaster recovery for their fellow Americans. That is how 
they voted over there. But Speaker Boehner knew how much trouble he 
would be in with, among others, Governor Christie of New Jersey, so he 
called it up anyway. He violated this so-called Hastert rule and he 
brought it up for a vote, and it passed again in bipartisan fashion.
  Today, tonight, tomorrow, the next day--any time he chooses--Speaker 
Boehner can turn the key and unlock the government tea party shutdown. 
He can do that. He has done it three times before. Of course, that got 
all his tea party folks all excited and they started making new threats 
and new challenges and new demands, so he is reluctant to go down that 
road again. But he has done it before, and it remains in his hands. I 
would submit it is the right thing to do for our country, and that he 
should put that first.
  The first way they fouled up the continuing resolution was to try and 
stall the Affordable Care Act on it. Well, we voted that down over and 
over, and cooler heads may be beginning to prevail. But I would remind 
everybody there are two pretty distinct, I guess we will call them 
ObamaCares now, since that is the word that is being used--two 
ObamaCares out there. One, to use Majority Leader Reid's phrase, is a 
punch line. It is the punch line ``ObamaCare'' that revs people up at 
rallies, that sends that rightwing e-mail chain into vibrations, but 
which

[[Page 14839]]

is mostly a product of a fertile and overheated imagination.
  The real ObamaCare, at least the real one we see in my home State of 
Rhode Island, is actually something we like a lot. Seniors are getting 
protection from the dreaded doughnut hole and are saving over $1,000 
each on prescription medications, on average. They see the Affordable 
Care Act as something that is having a real benefit in their lives 
right now.
  Parents, such as myself, who have kids out of college and under 26--
and I hear this from everybody across Rhode Island--are saying: Thank 
gosh the Affordable Care Act is there, because my daughter is out of 
college and she hasn't been able to find a job yet that has a health 
care benefit, so I can keep her on my policy and I don't have to worry 
if she gets sick the whole family could be bust. Having her on my 
policy makes me feel so good. Thank you for that.
  That is what I hear. That is a real and good thing for actual Rhode 
Islanders. It is not the imaginary ObamaCare. It is the real ObamaCare.
  Families who have a child with a preexisting condition--what do you 
do about that? You could spend down and give up all your resources, 
everything you have worked for and earned, so that your family can go 
on Medicaid--that is one way--or you could stay in the same job forever 
because the minute you try to move from your employer's health care 
plan to a new employer's health care plan, your child's preexisting 
condition doesn't get covered any longer. So you are trapped. Across 
this country, people are spared that agony by the Affordable Care Act.
  We had Peter Orszag in the other day to talk to our caucus. He said 
that if you extend out the cost of Medicare to the future, it is 
already down $1.2 trillion from the savings we see from reforms that 
are happening in red States, in blue States, in Massachusetts, where 
the Presiding Officer is from, in Utah, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, 
in Minnesota, in California, in Rhode Island--all across the country. 
It is not political. It is about a better health care system, and we 
are already seeing the savings.
  That is what they want to take away. That is what they want to stop. 
One thousand dollars out of the pockets of seniors and back to the 
pharmaceutical companies--that is what the result would be; parents 
having to lose the protection for their kids at 26; families trapped 
with a child with a preexisting condition never able to leave the 
company they work for; and the savings that we are already seeing 
beginning to evaporate. Why do you shut down the country and harm 
people in those ways? It makes no sense. The tea party shutdown has to 
stop.
  I ordinarily come to the floor at this time to discuss the appalling 
way the Senate and the House are blissfully ignoring the evidence all 
around us of what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and 
oceans. There is a clear connection between the problems we are in 
today that have caused this tea party government shutdown and our 
inability to face the facts about carbon pollution as a Congress. There 
are some similar characteristics between those two problems, and I 
would like to discuss them briefly.
  One characteristic is an inability to face and address present or 
looming problems--real ones. In the case of the tea party shutdown, 
they have actually created a massive artificial problem--a government 
shutdown for our country--at the same time that the tea party members 
prevent us from getting together to take the Senate budget and House 
budget and bring them into conference and agreement in the ordinary 
process like adults. It is all in the service of the pretense I just 
discussed: that the Affordable Care Act isn't actually good for our 
country. It is a triple phony-problem whammy for our country. This 
inability to face and address real problems is the first 
characteristic.
  The second characteristic is that inability is based on opposition 
that stands on false or fanciful arguments based more on propaganda 
than facts. In the case of climate, the fanciful argument--the 
falsehood--is that the jury is still out. The evidence is not only 
real, but it is overwhelming right now.
  The third characteristic is that the opposition that gives rise to 
this inability to face and address real problems is fomented by small 
interest groups wishing to exercise undue influence without due regard 
for the harm they cause to their fellow Americans.
  That is our DC trifecta these days. We can't deal with real problems. 
We have an atmosphere of phony arguments and propaganda that foul 
things up, and it is based on opposition that is driven by small but 
powerful special interests.
  I hope and pray the American people will send a strong message to the 
tea party to knock off the tea party shutdown that is closing and 
fracturing our government. I hope the response of the American people 
is a wake-up call to them. As one faction of one party in one House of 
Congress in one branch of our separated powers of government, they 
don't get to have everything their way. That is not the way the 
Constitution was structured. And that is particularly true when the 
public doesn't agree with them--and the public doesn't agree with them. 
They just lost an election on this exact issue.
  We are going to have other disagreements, and if we just roll through 
this one and then bang right up against the next hostage scenario--very 
likely on the debt limit, which, if we blow that and go into default, 
will be even more catastrophic than the accumulating economic harm of a 
government shutdown--if we keep going into one hostage scenario after 
another, then we won't have solved the real problem: We cannot work 
like responsible adults when a minority--a faction of one party in one 
House in one branch of government--is having the procedural equivalent 
of a tantrum.
  And true as science and real as Mother Nature, we have the problem of 
carbon pollution bearing down upon us. Will the polluters prevent 
action on that? Will we fail to do our duty as representatives of the 
American people? Will we be unable to face and address this real 
problem because we are opposed by false and fanciful arguments, with 
the strings pulled by special interests, instead of us looking plainly 
at the problems and coming together for a reasonable solution?
  This has been a different day than my usual ``time to wake up'' 
speech. It is time to wake up to the problems of carbon pollution and 
climate change. It is also time to wake up to the peculiar way that 
special and narrow interests are able to tie this body in knots and do 
damage to the American public for their own benefit. That larger 
problem is something we are going to have to reconcile ourselves with. 
If we just look at this as one problem--the tea party shutdown--and we 
get through it, we will simply go on to another unless we have decided 
that our Constitution matters for something, that the structure of 
government the Founding Fathers put together gave us a procedure to 
work out our differences and that we should follow that constitutional 
procedure even when we have strong feelings about something. That is 
the legacy of the men and women who founded this country. It is the 
legacy for which men and women have fought and bled and died. It 
besmirches that legacy to have a tiny faction of one party in one House 
of one branch of government break the whole mechanism just because they 
want everything their own way.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I think the Senator from Rhode Island had 
it exactly right calling it a tea party shutdown. It is unnecessary, it 
inflicts pain on far too many Rhode Islanders and people from 
Massachusetts and Ohioans. It is all so needless. It is so simple: Open 
the government.
  I think Speaker Boehner needs to make a decision: Does he want to be 
Speaker of the far right wing of the Republican Party or does he want 
to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? If he chooses to do 
the latter, it will mean putting what is called the continuing 
resolution to reopen the government on the floor in

[[Page 14840]]

the House of Representatives down the hall, allowing all 430-something 
Members of the House to vote--Members of both parties, all duly elected 
in November, all sworn in on January 3 of this year--allow them to 
vote. If they vote, I am confident that Democrats and Republicans 
together will reach a strong majority, that legislation will then be 
sent to the White House, the President will sign it, and the government 
shutdown will end. It is irresponsible not to let the House of 
Representatives vote.
  Yesterday or earlier today the President said: One faction of one 
party of one House of one branch of government shut down the 
government. This whole lurching from one crisis to another by design, 
by sort of a manufactured crisis that we have seen over and over, is 
something that simply doesn't work for the American people.
  I come to the Senate floor from time to time and read letters from 
constituents. I won't read letters today because the Senator from 
Arkansas will be speaking in a moment, but I will tell a few quick 
stories.
  A number of working Ohioans--from the small business owner in Lima, 
in western Ohio, waiting for a loan, to the farmer in Chillicothe 
looking for help from the USDA, to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 
employees on the base and contractors off the base--are all affected by 
this.
  Ninety-one World War II veterans who stepped off an Honor Flight in 
Washington, DC, on Tuesday to visit the World War II memorial--their 
memorial--are affected.
  I have been to those Honor Flights when they visit. They visit 
Arlington and the World War II memorial, which is a fairly new memorial 
on the Mall. Many of those soldiers and sailors and air men and women 
who have come from my State have never been to Washington before. This 
is their first trip. They are often in their eighties.
  Those 91 World War II veterans--many in wheelchairs, many with 
walkers--came anyway even though they heard the place was shut down. 
They weren't letting a government shutdown prevent them from paying 
their respects to their brothers and sisters who died during World War 
II or fought in that war and have died since. They persevered just as 
they had fighting in World War II.
  These organizations give back to the men and women who gave so much 
to our country.
  These 91 World War II veterans prevailed even though the memorial was 
shut down. They pretty much forced their way in, with help from a 
number of others.
  But too many Ohioans will be hurt.
  Sharon Purdy of Spencerville, OH, wrote to me, concerned about the 
status of this weekend's National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service 
held each year in Emmitsburg, MD. Her husband Lee was killed in the 
line of duty in the year 2000 and was memorialized there 12 years ago. 
Sharon goes back every year to pay her respects. Two Ohio firefighters 
killed in the line of duty will be honored this year--Michael Burgan 
from the Sugarcreek Fire Department and Rocky Duncan from the Niles 
Township Fire Department. Thousands of firefighters and their families 
will be coming from across the country to pay their respects, but 
presumably the gates will be closed. That is how government is repaying 
them for their sacrifice because some people want to score political 
points instead of doing their job and are irresponsibly shutting down 
the government--the so-called tea party shutdown.
  I received a letter today from Judith Cowan, the president of the 
Ohio Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Center. She is building a state-
of-the-art manufacturing center in Lima, OH--investing in new 
electromagnetic forming technology. She has been partnering with the 
Economic Development Administration to build the center.
  She received a notice today that her reimbursement check from EDA is 
on hold due to the shutdown. EDA is not allowed under the law to do 
that. Because they can't pay the bills, they must stop because of this 
irresponsible tea party shutdown of the government. Her project is in 
midconstruction, supplies have been purchased, concrete has been 
poured, and workers' time has been set aside. She told my office she 
makes an effort to hire local contractors and use small businesses in 
her supply chain. She is concerned that these small businesses that 
live paycheck to paycheck depend on her. Think of the people who poured 
the concrete. Think of the small companies that did the ironwork. Think 
of the other companies that have sold to her for this EDA-financed 
project and you realize some of these small businesses are going to 
face very hard times, again because of this hard-headed, far-right tea 
party shutdown which was simply unnecessary.
  Contrary to the political games the far right in the House, the 
radicals, are playing, this is not a game. These are real people facing 
a real and devastating impact. They do not deserve to be punished for 
the political ideology of a few.
  Remember, one faction of one political party in one House of one 
branch of government has held hostage the whole rest of the government 
and these hundreds of thousands of Federal employees and the millions 
of people affected by them. This is not about whether we will or will 
not agree to go to conference on the budget. This is about whether 
Congress in this country can continue to govern.
  Senate Democrats have compromised on funding levels. According to 
reports, the Senate-passed resolution comes at a level 18 percent below 
what the President proposed 5 years ago. It is 17 percent below what 
the Democratic Congress proposed 4 years ago. It is 10 percent below 
what Republicans proposed 3 years ago and 3 percent below the debt 
ceiling of 3 years ago. This is not about spending. This is not about 
fiscal issues. This is about attaching one party's--in this case the 
Republicans'--political platform--presumably out of the 2012 Republican 
Convention--to simple legislation to make the government work, to keep 
the government going.
  It is a waiting game they are willing to play. The American people 
are not willing to play. For some it is OK to hurt 1,000 small 
businesses as the SBA loan program is furloughed. For some it is OK to 
put 50,000 Ohio Federal employees and hundreds of thousands more around 
the country out of work. For some it is OK to deny senior citizens, in 
Mansfield or in Ravenna or in Youngstown, a new Social Security 
benefit.
  It is not OK with me. It is not OK with most of the Members of the 
Senate. It surely is not OK with the American people. It is time to 
stop these political games. It is time to put the American people 
first.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
  Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I rise to say I have disappointment and 
frustration and that is what is causing me to speak today, because this 
is the day I worked very hard to prevent. I think many in this Chamber, 
on both sides of the aisle but particularly on this side of the aisle, 
have worked very hard to prevent this day from happening. Our 
government has shut down. It hurts our economy just when we are turning 
the corner, and this is something I think the economists are talking 
about. When we talk to our colleagues, not just in this Chamber but 
around the country, when we talk to Governors and talk to State 
legislators and businesspeople, people we know from all around the 
country, they are so disappointed that it has gotten to this point.
  I think most people express what I heard about 10 days ago when I was 
in Arkansas. I was at a big dinner to raise money for cancer research 
at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences. By the way, they 
raised about $1 million that night. It was a great evening. They 
honored my parents, which was very nice. But nonetheless, when we were 
there, I bet I had a dozen people come up to me and say: What is wrong 
with the House? Have these people lost their minds? What are they doing 
over there?
  This is back about 10 days ago when they voted the way they voted 
recently on the farm bill. That was on a Thursday. On Friday, they took 
that step

[[Page 14841]]

that was leading to where we are today on shutting down the Government.
  What I tell the folks in Arkansas is: Look, hyperpartisanship has 
taken over here. This is one of those situations where if we look at 
the track record of the Senate--I know it is not true in every single 
case--but if we look at the track record of the Senate in our Chamber, 
we try to work in a bipartisan way. Because of the nature of the rules, 
because of the size of the body, because of the traditions, quite 
honestly because of the Constitution, because of our DNA, we tend to 
work together in this body. That has been a key to the Senate for years 
and years.
  What it has led to in this particular case is we have passed four 
what I think of as very responsible measures to keep the government 
open. These are four responsible measures we voted on fair and square. 
They came to the floor. The votes were not all 100 to nothing, but 
nonetheless people are working together to try to get this resolved.
  You go down the hall to the House and what you see down there is ``my 
way or the highway'' politics. My fellow Americans know it is true that 
these are dead-end politics. It is leading us nowhere.
  We have to think of where we have been in the last few years. Think 
about how bad things were in the great recession. Think about the 
progress we have made since then. Look at our housing market. It is so 
much better today than it was 5 years ago. Consumer confidence is back, 
headed in the right direction. It is good. It is getting stronger all 
the time. Look at sales of trucks and cars in this country. They have 
reached their fastest pace since November of 2007, before the crash.
  In the private sector, month after month they continue to add jobs 
all around the country. Those are good results. Why in the world does 
the House want to put this all in jeopardy? I have been concerned 
because in the last few days I have had reporters who kind of stalk us 
out in the hallways on our way in and out of the Capitol or when we are 
voting--I have had more than one stop me and say: You realize when we 
go down and cover the House, they talk about red State Democrats. They 
talk about your race in Arkansas.
  It is going to be a very sad day in this country when we learn this 
is all about politics. I sincerely hope it is not all about politics. I 
hope we do not have people down in the other Chamber who have elevated 
politics above what is best, what is right for our country.
  When I hear those questions from reporters, there certainly are 
people down there who are talking a lot about politics when this Nation 
is in crisis. I think we should all be concerned about that. I think we 
should make sure that is not the case. If they have a legitimate 
philosophical issue, that is one thing. But if this is all about 
politics, if these irresponsible set of votes to shut down the 
Government is all about politics, then shame on them. Because when we 
look at the impact this is going to have--the Social Security 
Administration will be forced to reduce staff. That causes delays for 
our seniors as they file for benefits and as they apply for replacement 
Social Security cards. The progress we have made with the VA--I have 
been very involved in trying to cut back the VA backlog of claims. That 
progress we have made there is going to stop. It is going to force our 
vets to wait even longer to get the benefits they have earned.
  When we look at small businesses with the shutting down of the Small 
Business Administration, we are going to have hundreds and hundreds of 
small businesses that are going to lose their access to capital just in 
the next few days. The national parks, wildlife refuges, recreational 
areas--it is a terrible thing for American families who want to take 
their children out and want to take their families out to explore and 
experience the great outdoors here in America, some of the raw beauty 
America has to offer. But it is also bad for business. We have a lot of 
businesses in my State, we have a lot of businesses around the country 
that are around these areas. They thrive on things such as canoe 
rentals, camping equipment, et cetera. It could be bicycling, could be 
hiking boots, whatever it is. These businesses depend on that type of 
activity. They depend on those facilities being open, and they depend 
on Americans having the ability to go out and see and experience the 
great things in this country.
  I am also chairman of the subcommittee on agriculture appropriations. 
I know firsthand the devastating impact this shutdown will have on our 
agricultural industry. It is going to have negative ripple effects all 
around the Nation's economy.
  One thing I have learned the hard way in Washington in the last 10 or 
11 years, there are a lot of people inside the beltway who do not 
understand agriculture. They do not get excited about agriculture. They 
do not care about agriculture. Sometimes they take it for granted. But 
the truth is agriculture is one of the core strengths in the U.S. 
economy. It is something we do better than everyone else in the world. 
Everyone else in the world wants to be like us. It is something we can 
be proud of. It adds a lot to the Nation's economy. It is also great 
for our trade.
  If we take my one State of Arkansas, it is our largest industry. It 
supports one in six jobs in my State. It also creates about $17 billion 
of economic activity, and overall, when we look at the State's economy, 
it is about 25 percent of the economy of Arkansas. That is going to be 
true--maybe those numbers are not exactly the same--that kind of ratio, 
those kinds of numbers are going to be true in every State in the 
Union.
  I know Senator Stabenow is chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee. 
She talks about how everybody thinks about Michigan as heavy industry, 
the auto industry, et cetera, and all that is true. But the second 
largest industry in Michigan is agriculture.
  It is just like if we go to a State such as Massachusetts. The mix of 
agricultural products in a State such as Massachusetts is going to be 
very different than what we have in the State of Arkansas, but it 
allows Massachusetts to utilize its natural advantages, natural 
resources. Things such as specialty crops are going to be very 
important up there. We have some of that in our State. But every State 
has a different mix and it is important that every State be very strong 
in agriculture.
  One of the newer areas in agriculture, which is good, is organic 
farming and the like. Certainly, that is part of the future. That is 
something in the Senate farm bill. It is something we want to see get 
done. We don't want to see that brought to a halt or hampered in any 
way.
  We don't want to see our food supply and fiber supply jeopardized by 
rank politics down the hall in the House of Representatives. The House 
has already created turmoil in this vital industry by shutting down the 
government. But to complicate matters, they have also taken another 
very irresponsible set of actions in the last few weeks; that is, they 
have allowed, because of their own problems down the hall, they have 
allowed the 2008 farm bill to expire.
  Last night at midnight we went from the 2008 farm bill to the 1949 
law. The United States of America is currently under the 1949 
agriculture law. The problem is there is no solution in sight.
  God bless Debbie Stabenow. Senator Stabenow has been an amazing 
champion for agriculture. I mentioned her--agriculture is the second 
largest industry in Michigan--but she has worked so hard in the last 
couple of years to try to get this Chamber to do right on agriculture, 
and it has.
  Last year we passed a farm bill. It went down the hall and died. This 
year we passed a farm bill. It went down the hall and they blew it up.
  We see us working in a bipartisan way. By the way, that farm bill in 
the Senate got something like 66 votes, a good, solid bipartisan vote. 
But the House Members, they continue to wreak havoc with this economic 
powerhouse.
  Right now, think about agriculture, one of the core strengths, one of 
the pillars of the U.S. economy. We see it facing a double whammy. They 
got the slowdown. Now they have the expiration of the 2008 farm bill.

[[Page 14842]]

  What does that mean? If you are a farmer, you will know what this 
means. The Farm Service Agency, Rural Development, the Natural 
Resources Conservation Service--the county offices will all be closing. 
We had farmers today call us and say: Can I get this payment? I can 
make this happen? Can I apply for something? A lot of times the answer 
to that is going to be, no, because those offices will be closed. When 
they need help, there is not going to be anyone there to help them. 
When they go there, basically they are going to knock on the door and 
it is going to be locked up. They are going to be closed for business. 
This means that new USDA loans and grants are being stopped. This means 
the cutting-edge agricultural research that America is famous for is 
going to stop.
  It also means that when it comes to food inspection and those 
workers, that is going to be in jeopardy as well. That is something we 
fought very hard on. I was allied with many of my Republican colleagues 
on that matter.
  The worst part about this--and maybe the saddest part about this--is 
that it was all so preventable. We can still prevent it from happening. 
We can do something today to make this go away. But, nonetheless, here 
again the House refuses to compromise. It is this ``my way or the 
highway'' attitude, as I said before, that is leading us to a dead end.
  About 2 weeks ago, several of us were fortunate enough to listen to 
Tom Carper come and speak to us about some things that were on his 
mind. It was a bipartisan group. There were 15 or 20 of us there. Tom 
singled out one of our great colleagues, Mike Enzi. Mike Enzi has been 
a stalwart conservative, red rock Republican, but he is someone we all 
know, trust, and respect.
  He talked about when Mike Enzi and Ted Kennedy were paired up as 
chair and ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee. That is a very 
unlikely pair. They don't get any different than that in philosophy, 
personality, background or regions of the country. Nonetheless, those 
two Senators adopted what they called the 80-20 rule. They knew they 
didn't agree on everything so they said: Let's find 80 percent of the 
things we can agree on. Let's work on those and let's get it done and 
that is what they did. It is a great example of bipartisanship.
  Senator Kennedy, as liberal as he was--he was a great liberal lion, 
and everybody knows that. He was very staunch in his views and very 
serious about how he took those views, but he was also very much 
willing to reach across the aisle. That 80-20 rule is what is missing 
down the hallway. We still have it in the Senate, to some extent but 
not as much as we used to. We need to make sure we reestablish this 80-
20 rule and find areas of common ground where we agree so we can work 
with each other in every single situation we possibly can. But down the 
hall, that is gone, and that is the problem right now in Washington.
  There are a lot of people in the Congress--some in the Senate as well 
but in the House and Senate generally--who say: I want 100 percent or 
nothing. If I can't have 100 percent, you get nothing. They will do 
everything they can to stop it, and that is exactly what happened. That 
is why we have this crisis today. It is completely manufactured by the 
U.S. House of Representatives.
  I feel that I am elected by my people to make the hard decisions, do 
what is best for the country, do what is right, and use my best 
judgment. All of these are judgment calls, and they are tough calls, 
but that is what governing is about. It is about making those tough 
calls and showing some leadership.
  So tonight I urge our colleagues in the House, all 435 of them, to 
stop the hyperpartisanship, especially those on the Republican side of 
the aisle who just can't seem to say yes when it comes to a bipartisan 
solution. I urge them to stop the hyperpartisanship and work with the 
Senate to reopen our government.
  I will be working very hard to find a responsible agreement, and I 
sincerely hope we have a sufficient number in the House who will join 
me, and let's get this done.
  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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. As chair of the HELP Committee--that great committee upon 
which the Presiding Officer also sits and a valuable member of that 
committee--I was just informed by our staff that as of this last hour, 
over 2.8 million people have gone on healthcare.gov to get information 
and sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
  In fact, there were so many people online that at different places in 
the country, the Web site froze. Then I heard some of my Republican 
friends were saying: See, we told you it wasn't ready. The Web site is 
not working right. If very few people had signed up, they would have 
said: See, we told you no one is going to sign up for it. They are 
trying to have it both ways.
  There were 2.8 million Americans on the first day logged on to 
healthcare.gov to get this information, and, again, to sign up. By 
tomorrow we will have some data and some statistics on how many people 
who not only inquired but have actually signed up on the Web sites. We 
will have some more information on that tomorrow. Obviously, the 
interest is there, and we knew it would be.
  Leader Reid told a story today about how years ago he went out and 
visited Google in California. At the time they were telling him that 
when they first started Google, they didn't realize how many people 
would be using it, and they kept crashing and freezing. So they had 
glitches of their own. There are some glitches in this system because a 
lot of people are coming on and wanting the information and wanting to 
sign up. That is the good news, and it is what we always knew.
  We knew that when we passed the Affordable Care Act, if we approached 
it in a diligent, forthright way but cautiously and in an orderly 
manner, it would work, and that is why it has taken us almost 3 years 
to get to this point because we wanted to do it right. We wanted to do 
it in a way that would work.
  I think today is a remarkable day in the history of our country in 
that we are now going to have affordable health care insurance for 
every American that cannot be taken away if you get sick. They can't 
deny it to a family because somebody had a preexisting condition. 
Everyone will have health care insurance that will be affordable and 
can't be taken away, and we will have a whole new suite of preventive 
care measures and wellness programs to keep people healthy and to 
prevent illness in the first place.
  We have turned the corner on bringing health care to every American 
regardless of their health status, regardless of their economic status, 
regardless of whether they have a job or don't have a job, no matter 
how old, no matter how young, and no matter the circumstances. Everyone 
will be able to be covered by health care insurance.
  I guess I might also say it is another red letter day because of the 
closedown of the government. We have the House of Representatives that, 
again, will not even put the bill on the floor of the House for a vote 
that will keep the government running. Think about that. They will not 
even put it on the floor for a vote because they know if they put it on 
the floor, they will get enough Republicans and Democrats to vote for 
it, and it will pass.
  So the tea party extremists in the House--instead of putting it on 
the floor and passing it tonight so the government could be back in 
business tomorrow--are trying to make a little deal. First it was to 
defund and delay ObamaCare. Now they have something they are doing on 
the House floor where they are going to fund some little TV programs. 
It is nonsense. This is not worthy of a great country.
  I had a nice conversation with Secretary of State Kerry this 
morning--

[[Page 14843]]

not necessarily just about this, but, of course, we talked about the 
government shutdown. I asked him: Secretary, you are close to this. How 
is this playing in other countries? Secretary Kerry said: It is painful 
for us in the State Department--representing the government of the 
United States in a nonpartisan way--to have other countries look at us, 
scratch their heads, and wonder why we are doing things like this. He 
was just pained, not for himself but for all of his wonderful diplomats 
and ambassadors all around the world who represent our country and what 
they must have to go through to have other countries see what we are 
doing and question our judgment.
  That is what the tea party people are doing. They are driving this 
country down. What they are doing is very dangerous. It is 
ideologically driven obstructionism, and it has taken a dangerous turn.
  Again, despite the efforts to pass a continuing resolution to fund 
the government, the House Republicans have shut down the government 
because we will not submit to defunding or delaying ObamaCare, or the 
Affordable Care Act, whichever you call it.
  It seems as though we see this crisis differently. I was reading a 
newspaper report that one Member of the House Republican caucus said 
with a big smile: We are very excited. It is exactly what we wanted, 
and we got it. This is exactly what they wanted, a government shutdown 
and they got it? We are excited, she said.
  The article also notes the reaction of another representative who 
reportedly said: It is wonderful. We are 100 percent united. Again, 
that was from another tea party Republican.
  What are they excited about? Are they excited about the hundreds of 
thousands of Federal workers who are on furlough today? Are they 
excited about the closed monuments and the national parks? Are they 
excited about the delayed veterans' benefits, Social Security, loss of 
economic activity and jobs?
  After more than three decades in Washington, it is difficult to shock 
me, but the sheer cynicism and fundamental lack of decency we are 
witnessing right now is nothing short of breathtaking.
  As I understand it, this is just the first step. The tea party 
Republicans continue to threaten that if the Senate and President Obama 
don't submit to their demands, they will create another economic crisis 
by causing our country to default on the national debt in the middle of 
the month.
  Who pays the price for this recklessness?
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. HARKIN. I would be delighted to yield to my friend from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. The Senator from Iowa has the special responsibility of 
the authorizing and appropriating committee that deals with health and 
education and the National Institutes of Health, and so he understands 
medical research better than most.
  I am sure he is aware now that the junior Senator from Texas, Mr. 
Cruz, is making a list of those agencies of government which he and the 
tea party Republicans believe should be reopened. The first cut on that 
list includes the Veterans' Administration, but it doesn't include the 
564,000 employees who are also veterans, one-fourth of whom are 
disabled veterans. He has included the National Park Service because of 
the embarrassment of international visitors coming to the Statue of 
Liberty and finding it closed, and he included the District of 
Columbia.
  I note he has not included the National Institutes of Health.
  I wonder if the Senator from Iowa has read the Wall Street article 
today. It says, as follows:

       At the National Institutes of Health nearly three-quarters 
     of the staff were furloughed. One result: director Francis 
     Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be 
     admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each 
     week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, 
     most of them cancer patients, he said.

  My question is this: Would the Senator from Iowa join me in writing a 
letter to the junior Senator from Texas and the tea party Republicans 
begging them to include the National Institutes of Health on their list 
of agencies that they may consider reopening?
  Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Illinois, I would be delighted to 
sign on to that letter because I am acutely aware of what is happening 
at NIH, but I might also tell my friend from Illinois that I would also 
like to include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
  Mr. DURBIN. We shouldn't push our luck with the junior Senator from 
Texas.
  Mr. HARKIN. But I must say to my friend that the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention is out there keeping diseases from spreading, 
containing them where they break out, putting in prevention measures 
all over this country. They too are furloughing people. Just think what 
would happen if, God forbid, some virulent bacteria or virus were to 
break out and they have--as my colleague knows, the CDC is very good at 
containment. They know how to handle these situations. What if they 
don't have the people to do that?
  Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Iowa, we better not push 
our luck asking for both the National Institutes of Health and the 
Centers for Disease Control from Senator Cruz.
  In all honesty, we are not sending any letters. This is reckless and 
irresponsible, to threaten the lives of people going for clinical 
trials at the National Institutes of Health. To quote from a distant 
past in this Chamber, in this Congress, ``Have they no shame?'' Have 
they no shame, to shut down the Government of the United States of 
America, endangering the lives of individuals over a political temper 
tantrum?
  Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend, it is shameful. It is not befitting a 
great nation. Maybe they would like us to be a Third World country.
  I see this and I don't understand. The Senator from Illinois is 
right: Where is their shame? But where is their sense of 
responsibility? Where is their sense of being responsible to the people 
of this country, to have a government that works to protect them, to 
keep them healthy, that does the medical research that the Senator 
spoke about? I see that, and I don't understand why they don't grasp 
the kind of damage they are doing to our country. I don't understand 
it.
  Mr. DURBIN. I will respond to the Senator from Iowa and then yield 
the floor back to him, and I see the Senator from New Hampshire 
waiting.
  Our last best hope in this debate is that moderate Republicans will 
step up and say, Enough. This is not what the Republican Party is 
about. This is not what America should be about.
  We need to be solving these problems on a bipartisan basis. If enough 
moderate Republicans would come to that empty side of the floor, which 
we have been witnessing all day today, and speak out, we could bring an 
end to this national embarrassment.
  I thank the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I thank the Senator for his input and 
his questions. I think the Senator has highlighted the kind of 
situation that begs credulity. People around this country must wonder, 
Have we taken all leave of our senses here?
  People say we should sit down and negotiate. We are always willing to 
negotiate. We are always willing to talk about issues. But when the tea 
party Republicans in the House say, No, we won't even keep the 
government open unless we defund ObamaCare, which is the law of the 
land, that is trying to nullify a law by holding a gun at our heads and 
saying we are going to shut down the government unless we get rid of a 
law--not a bill, not a proposal before us, but the law of the land 
upheld by the Supreme Court, this is not the way to govern. It is the 
way to take hostages, maybe. It is the way to commit blackmail, but it 
is not the way to run a government.
  So I hope the moderate Republicans--and believe me, there are a lot 
of good moderate Republicans. On my own committee, I deal with good 
people who work together to get bills passed and to get them out of our 
committee. We just need them to say to

[[Page 14844]]

the tea party: You are wrong. This is not good for us, it is not good 
for the country, and it is not good for the Republican Party, either.
  I will have more to say about this later as well as tomorrow when I 
will bring some more figures to the floor on how many more people are 
excited about the Affordable Care Act and are going to healthcare.gov.
  If I might, I wish to take one extra minute here to say that I was 
down at the World War II Memorial this morning to greet some Iowans who 
were coming in on an Honor Flight and I saw the barricade up there. I 
talked to one of the park officers and I said, This doesn't make sense. 
It doesn't make sense because it is open. I have come down here at 
midnight and walked around. It is out in the open. I could understand 
it if it were a building where you had to go through a device and 
security. I could understand that because the government is shut down. 
Then some buses came from Mississippi. I had to leave before the Iowans 
could arrive. They went behind the barrier. They went in and everybody 
was fine. I heard this afternoon that the Park Police came down and now 
we are moving people out again and putting up the barricades.
  Why are there barricades on the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln 
Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, or any of 
those where people walk around? It doesn't make sense to put up 
barricades around these outdoor memorials.
  While this whole shutdown of government is nonsense, I don't think we 
ought to respond to nonsense with more nonsense. So I call upon the 
Park Service and the Department of the Interior, on those instances 
where it is open 24 hours a day, such as the World War II Memorial, the 
Korean War Memorial, or the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments, why put up 
the barricades? People are there, they go there 24 hours a day. This 
doesn't make sense. I hope by tomorrow, whoever gave the orders to put 
those barricades up will have those orders superseded by someone higher 
up and get those barricades down. As I said, I can understand if it is 
a building where we have to have security, where we have to have guards 
and machines and equipment. I understand, with a government shutdown, 
that is not accessible. But for something that is open, as those 
monuments are, where people wander in and out 24 hours a day, it makes 
no sense to put up barricades. I call upon the Park Service to get rid 
of those barricades.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I came to join my colleagues on the 
floor this afternoon to talk about and to call on our colleagues in the 
House--those Republicans who have been taking this irresponsible 
action--to stop what they are doing and help us resolve this government 
shutdown.
  We are involved in a completely manufactured shutdown of our 
government. This is something that didn't have to happen. Right now, 
there is a majority in the House ready to pass a bill to keep our 
government open, to start it back up again, to end this crisis. But 
here we are. We are in the midst of the first government shutdown in 17 
years because a small minority of the minority party in the other House 
is holding this government hostage so it can pursue its agenda of 
trying to end the Affordable Care Act. I don't know why they don't want 
to make sure that people in this country can get access to health care. 
I am not going to talk about that this evening.
  This is irresponsible. We are already seeing the effects of this 
crisis in New Hampshire and across the country. We have thousands of 
Federal employees in my State of New Hampshire who could face 
furloughs. That includes workers at our Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. 
Those folks are from Maine and New Hampshire, but they are looking at 
furloughs.
  We have already heard from over 300 civilian technicians for the 
National Guard in New Hampshire who were notified they are going to be 
furloughed. I have started hearing from constituents whose lives are 
affected by our inability here in Washington to address keeping this 
government open.
  I heard from one of my constituents in Portsmouth, a man named Robert 
Cody. He writes:

       Dear Senator Shaheen,
       Please do not allow a government shutdown to occur. The 
     consequences to individuals and the economy will be 
     catastrophic.

  He goes on to say:

       To put this on personal terms, my daughter just finished 
     graduate school and began work as a consulting doctor at a 
     Veteran's Administration hospital providing care to wounded 
     veterans. If a shutdown occurs, she will lose her job and be 
     faced with crushing student loan debt and no way to pay back 
     the loans or her living expenses. The veterans who will be 
     deprived of her care will be victims of the shutdown as well. 
     Her situation is just one of many.

  Robert, you are certainly right about that.

       Hard-working individuals must not be forced to suffer to 
     make a political point.

  He goes on to say:

       Please do the right thing! The consequences to the economy 
     and unemployment will be far-reaching, and you will be blamed 
     if you contribute to this looming disaster.

  I say to Robert: I couldn't agree more with what you have said. I 
think we need to work together. We need to try to avoid any further 
harm to people who depend not only on the jobs--the people who are 
going to be laid off--but also those people who benefit from the 
services the Federal Government provides.
  Salaries for our Federal workers aren't just important for them and 
their families; they are also critical to their local economies. When 
hard-working New Hampshire citizens aren't able to get their paychecks, 
they stop making their mortgage payments, they stop paying their 
utility bills, they stop shopping at local stores. That is what we are 
going to see if this shutdown continues. It will inflict serious 
consequences on the economy.
  New Small Business Administration loans are not being originated. SBA 
loans are critical for job creation in New Hampshire. Our small 
businesses represent 96 percent of all employers. In 2012, SBA helped 
630 small businesses in New Hampshire get access to over $130 million 
in loans. Now, because of this shutdown, businesses are not going to 
have access to those loans.
  The Federal Housing Administration loans are slowing. Our housing 
market has really just begun to recover, but it is still fragile. Now, 
because of the shutdown, we are going to be holding up home sales 
because much of the FHA staff is furloughed.
  Of course, this is terrible timing for the tourism industry in New 
Hampshire. We are just beginning our fall foliage season. It is a 
spectacular time to travel around New Hampshire. We have tourists who 
come from all over the world, who spend money in our local restaurants, 
who stay at our hotels, and visit our attractions. Many of our small 
businesses rely on this time of the year to provide the revenue they 
need to continue operating all year long. We know the tourists who come 
from overseas stay longer and spend more money. But if the shutdown in 
government means we are going to be turning away many of those 
customers, applications for visas are going to come to a halt. 
According to the Congressional Research Service, during the 1995-1996 
shutdown, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 applications by foreigners for 
visas went unprocessed each day, and U.S. tourism industries--the 
airlines, the hotels, the restaurants, all of the affiliated businesses 
that depend on tourism--lost millions of dollars.
  We also have a visa center in New Hampshire that works on those 
visas. They are shut down as part of this government closure. We have a 
lot of small businesses in New Hampshire and across the country that 
rely on Federal contracts as they grow and create new jobs.
  I talked to one of those small business owners today--a man named Lou 
Altman with Globafone. I have known Lou for a long time. He has worked 
in New Hampshire and around the world. He called to express his deep 
frustration about our failing to pass a continuing resolution to keep 
this government open.

[[Page 14845]]

  Globafone's satellite technologies help Federal agencies meet 
critical needs, in addition to providing technology for many developing 
countries. But with the shutdown, everything is up in the air for 
Globafone. They are not certain what this means for their government 
contracts. As a result their cash flows are uncertain. Since their cash 
flows are uncertain, their line of credit with the bank is uncertain. I 
do not blame Lou for being frustrated for wanting to know why we cannot 
work together to get this done.
  I would say to my colleagues in the House, you cannot take this 
government hostage and expect that we are going to be able to 
negotiate. This government shutdown is bad for our economy, bad for 
middle-class families, bad for our country. Unfortunately, what we have 
seen this week is that some have decided they want to inflict another 
manufactured crisis as a tactic to prevent health care reform from 
going into effect.
  The people that I talk to in New Hampshire do not think this is a 
good approach. They know that a government shutdown is serious, that it 
has consequences for our economy and jobs. Considering that impact, it 
is no surprise that economists have forecast that our failure to deal 
with this crisis will have a significant impact on our economy.
  Even a 3- or 4-day shutdown could slow growth by 0.2 percent, 
according to economist Mark Zandi, and an extended shutdown could 
reduce growth by 1.4 percent. So holding the economy and critical 
services hostage to score political points is reckless and it is 
irresponsible. With the economy showing signs of improvement, this is 
the last thing we should be doing.
  It does not have to be this way. I was a Governor for 3 terms. In two 
of those terms the other party controlled both chambers of our 
legislature. But we were always able to enact a budget before the 
fiscal year ended. We had a lot of differences along the way. But both 
sides understood that in order to reach an agreement, in order to pass 
a budget, in order to keep government operating, we had to compromise. 
It would have been impossible to imagine the New Hampshire legislature 
not getting a budget to my desk because they wanted to play political 
games or that they would have sent me a budget that they knew I was 
going to veto.
  This Congress can certainly do better. We must do better. My 
colleagues have pointed out that the Senate in taking up the bill to 
keep the government funded, the continuing resolution, agreed to accept 
the dollar amount that the House wanted us to pass. So we compromised 
on this continuing resolution. What we saw for our willingness to do 
that was the House decided they were going to put all kinds of 
amendments on this bill to keep it from getting passed.
  I certainly hope that we can pass this bill, that the House will take 
it up. All the Speaker needs to do is take up the clean bill that the 
Senate sent them because they have the votes to pass it. If he is so 
sure that the votes are not there, then let people vote on it and see 
what happens.
  But we know that is not the case. We know that the votes are there to 
pass this bill. Because it is being held hostage to a small minority in 
the Republican caucus, this government is shut down and tens of 
thousands of people across the country are experiencing difficulties as 
a result. I certainly hope that we are going to see some action soon. I 
am going to continue to work for that. I am sure all of us in the 
Senate will try to see that something gets done so we can reopen this 
government.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me concur with much of what my 
colleague Senator Shaheen has just said. But let me begin by doing 
something we do not do enough and that is to say thank you to the 2 
million civilians and 1.4 million men and women in the military in all 
of our 50 States, including some 5,000 in my own State of Vermont. So 
we have 2 million civilians who are working for the Federal Government 
and 1.4 million men and women in the military. We owe them a deep debt 
of gratitude. The work that they do is enormously important for our 
country.
  They work to make sure that our drinking water and the air that we 
breathe is safe. It is not an accident that in many parts of this 
country, the air that people are breathing, that our kids are 
breathing, is a lot cleaner than it used to be. It took a lot of work 
to make that happen. We thank them for that.
  We have Customs people patrolling our borders. We thank them for 
their work. We have Federal workers to protect the health and safety of 
working people all over the country. We have Federal workers who are 
working to educate kids with special needs. We have Federal employees 
who provide food to low-income pregnant women, infants, children, and 
senior citizens. We have Federal employees who are working in VA 
hospitals, and we have nurses and many other staff doing a great job 
for our veterans.
  We have Federal employees who make sure that children receive needed 
care and services so that their parents can go to work. They repair our 
roads, bridges, dams, culverts, and sewers. They sweep the floors. They 
clean our bathrooms and make sure the places we work in are not 
infested.
  Americans who work for the Federal Government are part of the 
backbone of this country. I personally thank them for what they do. But 
it is no secret that in recent years there has been a huge assault 
against the Federal workforce. For the past 3 years, the pay of Federal 
workers has been frozen at a time when the costs that they are 
incurring in terms of gasoline, heating oil, prescription drugs, and of 
everything else have been going up. But their pay has been level.
  As a thank you for all of the work that Federal employees do here in 
Washington and Vermont, in Massachusetts and all over this country, our 
thank you to them has been to shut down the government and to tell some 
800,000 Federal employees--these are single moms trying to raise kids, 
these are proud people, civilians in the military, people in our 
National Guard; these are people who are doing important work, who have 
families to raise, and who are dedicated to their jobs--we are saying: 
Sorry, you have to go home. They are going home, and they are not even 
sure whether they are going to be paid or when they are going to be 
paid.
  So you are looking at tens of thousands of lives that are being 
radically disrupted because of this shutdown. I can tell you that in 
Vermont, we are very proud of the Vermont National Guard. The Vermont 
National Guard men and women served very heavily and bravely in Iraq 
and Afghanistan.
  They helped us when we had the terrible Irene floods a few years ago. 
The thank you that the Vermont National Guard is getting today--this is 
true all over the country--is that in Vermont some 450 workers at the 
Vermont National Guard are going to be furloughed. I know many of these 
people. They are good people. They are hardworking people. They do not 
deserve this type of behavior from the Federal Government.
  This affects people from all over the State, people who are trying to 
get homes, people who are trying to start businesses. That is not 
something that should be happening.
  Let me just very briefly explain the dynamic of what is going on 
right here. It is not complicated. The Republicans in the House are 
dominated by a relatively small group of rightwing extremists.
  What the Speaker there has said is that instead of bringing to the 
floor the bill that we passed here in the Senate, what is called a 
clean CR that will continue funding the government, instead of putting 
that bill on the floor of the House and allowing the entire 435 Members 
of the House to vote on that bill, what he has done is said to the 
House Republicans: OK, what do you want? The extreme rightwing has 
dominated that. What they have said is: We want to defund ObamaCare. 
That is the only legislation that you, Mr. Speaker, can bring to the 
floor of the House.
  This is a moment of enormous importance for the Speaker of the House. 
He

[[Page 14846]]

has to determine whether he is the Speaker of the Republican Party or 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, whether he is going to be 
dominated by a minority of one party in one part of the government or 
whether he will allow the entire House to vote.
  What many of observers have made clear is, if he puts that bill on 
the floor, it will pass and the government will reopen. I hope that he 
will do that. My political view, my progressive political views are 
pretty well known. My views on this issue are well known in Vermont and 
maybe elsewhere in this country. But what I want to do is very briefly 
to express what some Republicans are saying, people who are not 
rightwing extremists, who, in fact, have very strong disagreements with 
the Affordable Care Act but who understand that they cannot hold the 
American people hostage and they cannot blackmail the government in 
order to get their way.
  So this is not Bernie Sanders talking. These are conservative 
Republicans, but people who are not rightwing extremists. Let me quote 
some of my colleagues. These are the public statements they have made. 
Saxby Chambliss, a Republican Senator from Georgia, this is what he 
says:

       I'd love to [defund ObamaCare] too. But shutting down the 
     government and playing into the hands of the president 
     politically is not the right thing to do. Plus, it's going to 
     do great harm to the American people if we pursue that 
     course. We've been there. It didn't work.

  Senator Dan Coats, Republican from Indiana:

       Here's the hard truth: President Obama will not overturn 
     his signature legislation so long as he is president and the 
     Democrats have control of the Senate. Along with these 
     political realities, refusing to pass legislation to keep the 
     government funded will not stop ObamaCare from going into 
     effect.

  Senator Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma:

       It's not an achievable strategy. It's creating the false 
     impression that you can do something when you can't. And it's 
     dishonest.

  Republican Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee. The Washington Post 
reports that Corker compared shutting down the government to the way 
buffalo were slaughtered in the Old West. ``I know when you get led 
into a box canyon what that means . . . Box canyon, here we come.''
  Representative Peter King, Republican from New York.

       We should not be closing down the government under any 
     circumstances. That doesn't work, it's wrong, and you know, 
     ObamaCare passed. We have to try to defund it, we have try to 
     find ways to repeal it. But the fact is, we shouldn't be 
     using it as a threat to shut down the government.

  Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah.

       My personal belief is the only way to get rid of ObamaCare 
     is to be intelligent and smart about it and gradually just 
     work on it, work it through . . . to expect the government to 
     shut down is not the way to do it.

  Mark Kirk, Republican Senator from Illinois:

       I am one of those who says, let's not shut down the 
     government just because you don't get everything you want.

  Senator John McCain, former Republican candidate for President of the 
United States:

       In the United States Senate, we will not repeal, or defund, 
     ObamaCare. We will not. And to think we can is not rational.

  Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio:

       I do think we need to deal with the underlying problem of 
     overspending and we have to deal with the problem of 
     Obamacare, but those ought to be handled outside of the 
     context of a government shutdown.

  Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho:

       There isn't anybody that thinks that ObamaCare is going to 
     get defunded. It cannot happen . . . We were elected to 
     govern--you don't govern by shutting down the government.
  I can go on and on.
  There are many Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House 
who do not like ObamaCare. They understand that we don't shut down the 
government only to make a point. We don't throw 800,000 workers who 
work for the Federal Government, whose lives depend on a paycheck, out 
on the street in order to make a point.
  I think Jim Risch--Republican Senator from Idaho--had it right. I 
will repeat what he said:

       There isn't anybody that thinks that ObamaCare is going to 
     get defunded. It cannot happen. . . . We were elected to 
     govern--you don't govern by shutting down the government.

  Senator Risch is exactly correct.
  Where we are right now is that there are many Republicans in the 
Senate, there are Republicans in the House, and there are millions of 
Republicans all over the country who say they have disagreements with 
ObamaCare, but it was passed by the Congress almost 4 years ago and 
signed by the President. When it was challenged by the Supreme Court, 
it was upheld as being constitutional. We had a Presidential election 
where the Affordable Care Act was one of the major issues being 
debated. President Obama won by 5 million votes. We had Senate races, 
and Republicans lost two seats in the Senate. They lost seats in the 
House.
  There are sensible Republicans all over the country saying: Look, 
there are ways to deal with this issue, but don't shut down the 
government. Don't punish 800,000 workers. Do not deny benefits and 
services to tens of millions of Americans.
  I would like to go to another area and suggest--although I think the 
Presiding Officer well understands this--that what we are seeing today 
in terms of the attack on ObamaCare is not only some isolated act on 
the part of rightwing Republicans. I think many Americans are not 
aware. People may like ObamaCare or may not like ObamaCare. As we well 
know, today was the first day the exchange was open. Guess what 
happened. Millions of people went to the Web site. Guess what. When we 
have 48 million Americans who have no health insurance and millions 
more who are in need with high deductibles and copayments and they are 
given the opportunity to buy insurance, shock of all shocks, many of 
them are now going to the Web site. Our Republican friends are saying: 
No, no, we don't want to see that.
  My point--and I hope everybody understands this--is that this attack 
on ObamaCare is only one small part of a rightwing extremist ideology 
which is incredibly reactionary and which really intends not only to 
repeal ObamaCare but to repeal virtually every major piece of 
legislation passed in this country in the last 80 years that protects 
the interests of the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor, women, 
the environment, and people who are vulnerable. That is what their 
agenda is.
  I will give a few examples. The Environmental Protection Agency works 
hard to make sure the air we breathe is clean. There are many rightwing 
Republicans who don't want only to cut funding for the EPA, they want 
to abolish the EPA.
  We have a major crisis in this country in terms of millions of 
American workers being forced to work for very low wages. People are 
working for 8 bucks an hour, 9 bucks an hour. They can't raise a family 
working for these very low wages. Many of us believe it is important 
that we raise the minimum wage. Do people know what the rightwing 
agenda is, the agenda funded by a family like the Koch brothers, a 
family worth $70 billion that is pouring hundreds of millions of 
dollars into these rightwing extremist groups? Do you know what they 
say about the minimum wage? They say: Let's abolish the minimum wage.
  People think I am kidding. The view now of the majority of the 
Members, the Republican Members in the Senate and the House, is not 
only not raising the minimum wage, it is to abolish the concept of the 
minimum wage. What that means is that if you are living in a high-
unemployment area and the wages that are being offered to you by an 
employer are 3 bucks an hour or 4 bucks an hour, those are the wages 
you will have to accept because there will be no Federal floor. The 
Federal floor is $7.25, and that is much too low. Get rid of that, and 
we will have people working for $3 and $4 an hour.
  One of the most significant pieces of Federal legislation ever passed 
was passed in 1935--Social Security. Today we have over 50 million 
Americans who

[[Page 14847]]

are benefiting from Social Security. If you go to the Texas Republican 
Party platform--their recent platform, and they are one of the most 
powerful Republican parties in the country--they are pretty up front 
about what they believe. They want to end Social Security. They want to 
privatize it. That is their goal.
  The Veterans' Administration--and I speak today as chairman of the 
Veterans' Committee--today we have quite good VA health care through 
152 medical centers run by the VA, 900 community-based outreach 
clinics, many vet centers. VA does, most veterans consider, a pretty 
good job in providing health care. Do you know what some Republicans 
want to do? They want to privatize the Veterans' Administration. Check 
it out. This is the Texas Republican Party platform, which speaks for 
Republicans all over this country.
  It is not only the VA and it is not only Social Security, it is many 
other programs. We recently saw our friends in the House cut food 
stamps by some $4 billion this year. That is what they believe. 
Meanwhile, we have more people living in poverty today than at any time 
in the history of the United States. Many want to make devastating cuts 
in Medicaid, food stamps, and many other programs that people in this 
country are living on.
  I will conclude by saying that we could end this crisis in a very few 
minutes. All that needs to happen is the Speaker of the House has to 
bring up the clean bill we passed here in the Senate and give all of 
his Members a chance to vote on it. If he does that, this crisis will 
be over.
  It is morally wrong and it is extremely dangerous from a precedent 
perspective to allow this government and our President to be 
blackmailed or for the American people to be held hostage. If we were 
to succumb to that blackmail today, I can absolutely guarantee that in 
2 weeks, when the United States is going to need to pay its debts, and 
we don't, for the first time in the history of this country, have the 
money to pay our debts, and when the economists are telling us that if 
we don't pay our debts, there could be an international economic crisis 
leading to huge amounts of job loss all over the world, not only for 
the United States--if we surrender to them now on this issue, they will 
be back. They will be back and they will say: If you don't cut this and 
don't cut that, we are not going to allow you to pay the debts the 
United States owes. It will go on and on. Next year they will come back 
and they may say: Well, we are not going to fund the government unless 
you end Social Security or unless you cut Medicaid drastically.
  This is not the way a government in a democratic, civilized society 
can operate. We have our disagreements. God only knows we have that. We 
have debates. But there is a process.
  What the Republicans have not yet recovered from is the simple fact 
that they lost the Presidential election, they do not have control over 
the Senate, and they only have one body. They think that from 
controlling one body they have a right to control the U.S. Government. 
This is not how it works.
  I hope that people all over this country, whether they are 
conservatives or progressives, Democrats or Republicans, will listen to 
what some of the sensible Republicans are saying. In essence, what they 
are saying--and I have read many of the quotes from John McCain and 
others--is this: Yes, we have differences of opinion, and, yes, some of 
them disagree strongly with ObamaCare, but there is a process you go 
through to make those changes. Do not shut down the government, impact 
the entire economy, throw 800,000 people out of work, and deny services 
to millions of Americans. That is not the way to run the government in 
a democratic society.
  Let me conclude by hoping very much that the Speaker of the House 
will recognize that he is the Speaker of the entire House, not only of 
the Republican Party, and that he will let all of his Members vote on 
the legislation we passed in the Senate.
  Mr. REID. Before the Senator yields the floor, I would ask permission 
to direct a question to the distinguished Senator from Vermont.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Is the Senator from Vermont aware of the fact that Dr. 
Francis Collins today announced that scores of people are being turned 
away today from the National Institutes of Health clinical trials, 30 
little children from clinical trials. Is the Senator aware of that?
  Mr. SANDERS. I am aware of that.
  The point the leader is raising, what the question speaks to is that 
this is not a game we are playing when we are dealing with whether kids 
and others get treatment for cancer. What we are dealing with are life-
and-death issues. When the government is shut down and agencies such as 
the National Institutes of Health end cancer research--this is taking 
life away from people.
  Mr. REID. I ask through the Chair, is the Senator aware that this new 
gambit across the hall in the House of Representatives is only another 
effort to defund ObamaCare?
  Mr. SANDERS. Absolutely. Absolutely.
  Let me make a point for the majority leader. Today was the first day 
people could go onto the exchanges. Maybe the majority leader would 
like to explain to the American people that, in fact, some of these Web 
sites actually crashed because so many people came on board.
  Mr. REID. In response to my friend from Vermont, I had the good 
fortune of spending an hour several months ago with one of the founders 
of Google. He, with a twinkle in his eye--a young man still--and a big 
smile, talked about when they were trying to get Google started. They 
couldn't believe the people who wanted information. Their Web sites 
kept crashing because so many people wanted the information to which 
they thought they were entitled.
  Around America today millions of people, in the first few hours of 
the opportunity to sign up, rushed and overburdened a number of 
places--the Web sites. This is good news for America.
  I also say that these are the same people--I read a direct quote at 
an event earlier today. I am sorry I don't have it with me. In 1961 
Ronald Reagan talked about Medicare. I am paraphrasing, but this is 
pretty close. If they do not stop Medicare, then his children and his 
children's children will look back at the day when America used to be 
free.
  Can you imagine that?
  Mr. SANDERS. What I would say to the majority leader--and I was on 
the floor the other day reading quotes--when Social Security was first 
created, we had quotes from Republicans who were talking about the end 
of life as we know it, slavery coming to America. It is the same thing 
with Medicare. It is interesting.
  I would say to the majority leader that despite all of the anti-
Affordable Care Act rhetoric we hear--you would think nobody would be 
interested in getting into the program--the first day out, over 2 
million people went to the Federal Government's Web site. I am not 
quite sure why our Republican friends think that millions of Americans 
on the first day should not have the right to take advantage of a 
program that was passed by Congress.
  Mr. REID. I appreciate the advocacy of my friend from Vermont for all 
Americans. This good man, the chairman of the Veterans' Committee, 
Senator Sanders, is like me. I don't have a military record, nor does 
he, but that doesn't take away from the effort. We try to make sure 
veterans are taken care of. What this good man has done to protect 
American veterans already in a short period of time as chairman of this 
committee is outstanding. It is really remarkable how much he cares. I 
express my appreciation to the Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. I wish the American people also to understand that we 
are going to win this struggle because of the determination of the 
majority leader, who is standing for tens of millions of Americans who 
not only want access to affordable health care but do not want to see 
our government blackmailed by a small number of rightwing extremists.
  I thank the majority leader very much for his comments.

[[Page 14848]]


  Mr. REID. Madam President, we are going to go out in a few minutes, 
but this is my message to the House of Representatives, to the 
Republican leadership in the House of Representatives: Stop the games. 
The government is shut down. More than 70 percent of our intelligence 
community has been sent home. The National Institutes of Health has 
hundreds and hundreds of people home when they should be looking at 
their microscopes trying to cure diseases in America and around the 
world. Everyone in the world looks at the National Institutes of Health 
with jealousy, it is such a remarkably good institution.
  The President has said as to these games they are playing now--he 
sends these little bits and pieces over here--he will veto them. We 
won't allow them to pass here anyway. We want the government open. If 
they will pass the legislation to reopen the government, we will then 
talk about anything they want to talk about. We will have conferences 
on anything they want to talk about. And one of the things we would 
like to have a conference on is Senator Murray's budget that we have 
been trying to get to conference on for more than 6 months.
  The American people deserve more than they are getting from the House 
of Representatives, the so-called people's House.

                          ____________________