[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14852]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, one of the cornerstones of my lifetime 
of public service has been to work on bipartisanship. I have a long 
record of working with Republican Governors and Senators back home in 
Oregon. Here in Congress, every major initiative I've advanced has been 
working to engage bipartisan sponsors and finding ways that bring 
people together rather than divide them.
  But here in Congress, under the Republican leadership, I must say, it 
has been difficult, if not impossible. For example, there's been a 
claim that Republicans want to repeal and replace ObamaCare. They've 
never indicated a hint of how they would replace the Affordable Care 
Act and protect its most important provisions. They cannot say how they 
would produce a health care plan that would eliminate the stark specter 
of medical bankruptcy, which, under the Affordable Care Act, Americans 
no longer have to fear. They have no plan to protect families from 
being denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions and 
eliminate the pernicious lifetime limits which penalize families in the 
most desperate and tragic of circumstances.
  Now we're in the middle of their manufactured crisis of a government 
shutdown, and they risk a meltdown of the global economy by threatening 
America will not pay its bills on the national debt.
  There are three simple steps my Republican friends could take to 
prove they're serious and not cynical:
  First of all, Republicans campaigned the breadth of this country 
against the ACA, but they have included in their budget over a half 
trillion dollars in savings under the act and all of the revenues from 
the taxes. If they are serious and not cynical, they will remove that 
money from their budget and show what other services they would cut or 
taxes they would raise to make up for it.
  If they are serious and not cynical, they would bring their own 
spending bills to the floor for their members' vote. Remember, we still 
have pending the Transportation-HUD spending bill. On July 30, they 
just stopped in the middle of deliberations because they figured out 
that the bill was so bad that their own members wouldn't even vote for 
it.
  If they are serious and not cynical about their spending plan, they 
ought to allow their members to vote on their own spending bills, see 
if there's any more support today than there was 3 months ago. Then 
bring the Interior spending bill to the floor, which has been in 
committee limbo. The showstopper will be Labor, Health, and Human 
Services. If they're serious and not cynical, they will have recorded 
votes to show the American public what they really believe in.
  Last night, I was stunned that the final stunt in their ``let's-make-
a-deal, made-for-TV semireality show'' was to demand a conference 
committee be appointed. They want a conference committee on a bill that 
has already been law for 3 years that the American health care industry 
and local government have spent billions of dollars to be ready to 
implement, which goes into effect today.
  If you're serious about working on a cooperative basis and 
negotiating differences and want to have a conference committee, why 
don't you appoint a conference committee on the budget? The Senate and 
the House have both approved budgets, and the Republicans have refused 
to appoint conferees so that people can work together to resolve these 
differences. That is a pending item right now. It's ready to go.
  It's interesting. We had a jaw-dropping moment in the Budget 
Committee last week when my friend, Chairman Paul Ryan, said the reason 
they would not appoint conferees is because there might be too many 
motions to instruct. My goodness, the House might express its will and 
not be tightly controlled?
  We're in the midst of a manufactured government shutdown crisis with 
a looming disaster if they throw a tantrum that would prevent Americans 
from paying their bills. Republicans can prove that they are serious 
and not cynical by not using the health care reform savings to fund 
their budget, bringing their own spending bills to the floor and 
allowing them to be voted on, and then having a conference committee 
not on a law that is 3 years old, but on a pending item between the 
House and the Senate: the budget. Sooner or later, the system ought to 
be allowed to work.

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