[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14860-14861]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I take no pleasure in coming down to the 
House floor to talk about the government shutting down today.
  I represent the metro Atlanta suburbs, Mr. Speaker; and we got a lot 
of CDC employees in my district. I know everybody has got important 
Federal functions going on in their district; but I will tell you what 
the CDC does is honest to goodness life and death business--serious, 
serious business. I want to see the CDC open, I want to see the CDC 
funded, I want to see the CDC making America proud, as it has year 
after year.
  We have to look at how we got here today, Mr. Speaker. I have been in 
Congress 2\1/2\ years and the sad fact is in those 2\1/2\ years there 
has only been one time that I felt like the White House gave two hoots 
what my constituents cared about, just one time. That was in the debt 
ceiling debate in August of 2011. One time. It was a crisis 
circumstance, a crisis like a government shutdown--the only time the 
President came to knock on the door to say how do you think we ought to 
handle it, how do your 700,000 constituents believe we ought to handle 
it, how can we come together and make something happen? And we did. We 
came together, and we made a difference.
  Mr. Speaker, I remember coming to this Chamber as a young man. I sat 
over there, I sat right over there in the gallery, Mr. Speaker. I 
looked over there on the House floor and there was absolutely no one 
here. I don't mean not many people here, I mean absolutely no one here. 
I happened to have the misfortune of being here coming to see the 
Congress on a day when the Congress was not in session. There wasn't a 
thing going on.
  Mr. Speaker, where we are now in 2013, where the President's new 
position is, I will never negotiate, period, never, ever; where the 
Senate's new position is we do not need to have conversations with the 
House, we have the President of the United States on our team and so we 
never need to negotiate, ever--Mr. Speaker, if that is what we are 
going to have here in America, not only should I take my Constitution 
and toss it out the door, we should just go ahead and turn the lights 
off altogether. We shouldn't have to have a young man sitting in the 
balcony wondering why the place is closed down. We should just go ahead 
and confess that the reason the House no longer meets is because the 
President no longer cares what the people's House has to say.
  Mr. Speaker, I hear it over and over again: it's the law of the land; 
we should follow it. Now, I happened to hear it in the context of the 
President's health care bill. I don't hear it in the context of 
immigration law, for example, where the President just decides what it 
is that he wants to do, and he just goes out and implements it on his 
own. I don't hear it in the context of Federal drug law where the 
President decides, do you know what, these laws aren't as important as 
those laws so I'm just not going to enforce those anymore. And I don't 
hear it in the context of the President's health care bill, Mr. 
Speaker, for the literally thousands of exemptions he has already given 
to the law because he knows parts of it are unworkable.
  Now, we have to confess, Mr. Speaker: America moves in fits and 
starts. The pendulum swings back and forth. I have to give the 
President credit for bringing the discussion of health care in this 
country to a new place. He absolutely did. He brought attention to 
folks who are uninsured who can't find insurance. Not only did he bring 
attention to it, Mr. Speaker, really we have

[[Page 14861]]

created a majority of America that believes we ought to do something 
and solve that problem.
  But instead of solving that problem, the President re-regulated 
America's entire health care industry. There is not a man or woman in 
this Chamber, Mr. Speaker, there is not a man or woman representing 
Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives who doesn't have someone 
in their district who has lost their health insurance because of the 
President's health care bill.
  If you like your health insurance, you can keep it, was the promise. 
Do you remember the promise, Mr. Speaker? If you like your health 
insurance, you can keep it. That promise hasn't just been broken, that 
promise has been virtually erased from America's memory because tens of 
thousands of Americans are losing their health insurance. There is a 
headline in the paper every day, Mr. Speaker.
  All we are asking is for the Senate to sit down with us and let's try 
to solve real problems that real American families are really having 
today. For all the knowledge that my colleagues have of these citizens 
in their districts losing their health insurance, they've proffered 
nothing, nothing.
  We have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, right now before it gets any 
worse to do better. We should seize that opportunity. We should come 
together as our constituents expect us to. We have offered that hand to 
the Senate, Mr. Speaker. I hope they will take it.

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