[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14856-14857]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THIS IS NOT POLITICAL?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, here we are. The gentleman who just 
preceded doesn't want this to be political. It's totally political.
  The Republicans spent billions on the last election. They lost badly 
in the Presidential. They didn't take over the Senate. They even got 
1.4 million fewer votes for the House but, because of gerrymandering, 
they're still in charge.
  So now they're attempting to usurp the constitutional order in the 
United States of America. They're saying that one-half of one branch of 
the government of the United States, that is, the Republican majority 
in the House, should dictate policy to the rest of the country. They 
should be the rulers. They can change laws. They can ignore the Senate, 
ignore the President.
  They are making unequivocal demands. They've taken the country, the 
government hostage. This is disruptive. It's expensive. It's 
inconvenient for a lot of Americans who need to access these agencies.
  I was just meeting with the chief of the Forest Service. It's going 
to delay their capability of planning salvage and restoration 
activities on the hundreds of thousands, millions, of acres across the 
West that burned. They're going to have to stop all that. And then 
winter sets in, and then you're going to have big problems that you 
can't undo.
  But they don't care about any of that because this is totally 
political.
  Now, we're in the shutdown phase now, but their objective is to drag 
this out and hitch all of their demands--and if you've seen the list of 
demands, it's every bill that the Republicans have passed since they 
took over in 2011 that has not seen action in the Senate or been 
rejected by the Senate--would be appended to the debt limit of the 
United States.
  Now, shutting down the government, pretty radical. But we are really 
dealing here with, for short, ``Cruzites,'' I guess I would call them. 
They're sort of anarchist radical Libertarians who don't believe in 
government.
  They don't believe in evolution. They believe in devolution; devolve 
all the duties to the States, dissolve the Union, essentially, go to 
some loose federalism, and we'll reach some ideal point somehow.
  It's crazy stuff. But they're in charge. It's not even a majority of 
their caucus. It's a minority of their caucus who are dictating to the 
majority, because, with 211 fully red Republican districts, this is all 
about politics.
  Those people know that if they act reasonably here that they will get 
an ultra right-wing nut case Tea Party primary challenge, funded by the 
likes of the Koch brothers and others, very, very generously funded.
  So they've even managed not only to take the government hostage, but 
to intimidate their own truly conservative members, those who aren't 
``Cruzite'' anarchist radical Libertarians.
  Now, default is unbelievably irresponsible. Even a tiny threat of 
default, as they did a couple of years ago, downgraded our credit and 
drove up interest rates just a little bit. But we were much better off 
then.
  Today, if they do this, interest rates for everything in America will 
go up dramatically. That means tens of billions of dollars more per 
year just to retire the Federal debt. They supposedly care about the 
debt. Well, they're going to raise the debt immediately by adding 
interest costs.
  It means home mortgages bump again, stalls out the housing recovery. 
Cars go up again for loans.
  But, you know, they don't really care because they don't borrow money 
for things. Most of these people are rich, so they don't care. So what 
if it impacts hundreds of millions of Americans in their daily lives 
with their credit cards, with their car purchases, with their attempts 
to get at housing?
  They don't care. No, let's not make it political, guys. No, this 
isn't political.
  Come on. You want to be responsible?
  What's it about?
  If it's about the problems with ObamaCare, there are a lot of us over 
here who would like to fix it. You came in with repeal and replace, 
repeal and replace, 42 times repealing. Where's the replace?
  What are you going to do about people who have preexisting 
conditions?
  What are you going to do about kids between 18 and 26 who are on 
their parents' policies?
  What are you going to do about childhood disabilities who can get 
insurance now?
  What are you going to do about the 50 million uninsured people in 
this country?

[[Page 14857]]

  Where's the replace?
  Repeal, repeal, repeal. And now you're going to append a whole other 
list of demands onto this. Not political. Of course not. Not political 
at all.
  You lost the Presidential election. You lost the Senate elections. 
You lost the popular vote for the House; but because of your 
gerrymandering, you're still in charge.
  You do not represent a majority opinion in the United States of 
America on these issues. Don't do irrevocable harm to our government, 
our country, our future to get your political demands met unilaterally.

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