[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14859-14860]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, quite a day--first day of the government 
shutdown.
  Americans come to Washington to see the Lincoln Memorial, visit the 
Smithsonian, go to the National Zoo. They go to New York to see the 
Statue of Liberty--``give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses 
yearning for freedom.'' Go to national parks--the treasures of our 
country--closed. Services tapered down. No new patients at the National 
Institutes of Health. This should not be in America. Government 
shutdowns are wrong, and they're bad for our country.
  Now, let's think a little bit about how we got here. We got here 
because the job of the Congress, according to the Constitution, is to 
come up with a budget and appropriate monies. The Republicans have had 
a budget, and the Democrats in the House have asked month after month 
after month after month to have a conference committee appointed so 
that we could work with the Senate and come up with a budget. And the 
Republicans--even though we had bills, letters, requests--no 
conference, no, no, no, no, no.
  Now, beyond the last minute, beyond midnight last night, when all of 
their failed attempts to get the Patient Protection and Affordable Care 
Act--and that's what it is, it's an affordable care act and a patient 
protection act--abolished; passed 3 years ago; 43rd attempt. Reality: 
it's not going to happen. It's the law of the land. And one day it will 
be seen, like Social Security and Medicare, as one of the three 
greatest laws ever passed by this Congress.
  But they've tried everything they can to stop it: defund it, put it 
off a year, come up with different prevarications. At the last minute 
after midnight they say: We want a conference committee. They can get a 
conference committee if they come with a clean continuing resolution.
  And what's in their continuing resolution? A budget of $986 billion. 
The Ryan figures were less. That's what they wanted. It's not what the 
Democrats wanted. The Democrats want a higher budget. This cuts 17 
percent from Health and Human Services, programs the government offers 
to people in need, the safety net, people who more than ever need SNAP 
payments, need Meals on Wheels, need assistance. We accepted their 
lower figure for a continuing resolution. Even then it wasn't enough. 
They put it in all these proposals and abolished the health care bill.
  You know, when the Republicans came to power about 3\1/2\ years ago, 
one of the things they told the American people: We're going to be 
different. We're not going to have bills that combine different 
subjects. You know all you people don't like that, these bills with 
different subjects that come back from the Senate or pass the House 
with amendments. We're not going to do that. Then they come with bills 
that are the budget, a continuing resolution, along with abolishing 
ObamaCare. That's against what they said they would do.
  They said they were concerned about the debt, and they have offsets--
no bill could pass without an offset; nothing could contribute to the 
deficit. Yet they brought a bill, a continuing resolution, but 
abolishing the medical device tax, costing the government $30 billion. 
No offset.
  In the history on ObamaCare, they have been cited by PolitiFact twice 
for having the governmental ``Lie of the Year.'' One is they said there 
were death panels, panels that simply said that end-of-life discussions 
could be covered by government payments, a proposal that Republicans 
put forward--I believe with Senator Grassley and a gentleman from 
Louisiana.
  They also said it was a government takeover of health care. It's not 
a government takeover; it's insurance. It's the plan Mitt Romney put 
into effect, Bob Dole championed, Richard Nixon championed. It's a 
Republican plan. Most Democrats would have preferred a single payer, 
certainly a public option. They're not satisfied with that.
  Now they're talking about a special deal that Congresspeople get. 
Shame on them. I, for one, don't take Federal

[[Page 14860]]

insurance. I have a different program. But for the people in Congress 
and their staffers, because of an amendment Senator Grassley put in the 
bill, they go into the exchanges and they leave their Federal health 
care plan they've been in. It was subsidized, like employers subsidize 
health care. Now it is no longer. It's unfortunate.
  My time has run out. The government has run out.

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