[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14862]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Sanford) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, we are at a shutdown, which is to say that 
we are in a challenging time.
  My prayer, I think, is joined by so many other Republican colleagues 
for families that have been affected. It is something that we very much 
wanted to avoid in any way possible. That's why the multitude of 
different options were offered here by this House to the Senate, but 
they were ultimately rejected.
  I think that the bigger question, though, in any challenging time is: 
What does it mean, and where do we go from here? In that light, I'd 
just like to offer a little bit of context as to what all of this means 
and what's going on.
  Quite simply, I'd say that there is real value--real wisdom--in 
different perspectives. I don't think it's lost on any of us as 
Republicans in the House that two beats one in the world of politics. 
You have here a President who has said, I'll negotiate with Syrians, 
and I'll negotiate with Putin. You have Harry Reid, who has been 
anything but wanting to work with the Republicans in the House--he has 
been awfully dismissive--when what Republicans have been trying to say 
is, Wait a minute. Let's pause for just a second. There is a different 
perspective that we are hearing from folks back home on the 
implications in the implementation of so-called ``ObamaCare'' in going 
forward.
  The first is an issue that, frankly, has been lost in this whole 
debate, which is the constitutional issue on, ultimately, the balance 
of power and the separation of power. Our Founding Fathers were very 
deliberate in setting up a system wherein the Congress was to create 
laws; the judiciary was to interpret them with a thumbs up or thumbs 
down on constitutionality; and the executive branch was to administer. 
But what you have in this particular instance is a breach of that 
separation of power, because you have a President that is sort of 
unilaterally picking and choosing that which is to be implemented.
  Can you imagine if Bill Clinton or George Bush were to selectively 
decide the way in which the Tax Code might be implemented? We're just 
going to enforce it on poor folks but not on rich folks. To a great 
degree, that's what is happening here, and it is a constitutional issue 
that sets precedent in going forward, in essence, on the very 
separation of powers as deliberated and laid out in the Constitution;
  Secondly, I think it is a big issue and worthy of debate because, in 
this instance, you have 1,200 bigger businesses that were granted 
waivers before, ultimately, it was absolved for all large corporations 
while individuals were still stuck dealing with the law. You had an 
exemption for Members of Congress but no exemption for individuals 
across this country. That idea of selectively implementing, I think, is 
very, very dangerous ground because, ultimately, I would say a good 
part of the glue that has held our Republic together for over 200 years 
has been this notion of fairness, or equity. People believe that you 
may not like some of the laws, but, ultimately, they were administered 
fairly, evenly. That is not what is taking place at the onset of the 
Affordable Care Act, and I think you are playing with real dynamite 
when you begin to selectively implement a law.
  Thirdly, as has been noted by a number of speakers earlier, I would 
say there are real cost considerations. We are at something of a 
tipping point as a civilization as to what our Nation can afford, and 
we are looking at an awfully big, new bill that will come with this 
particular bill.
  Fourthly, I would say we are looking at some real unintended 
consequences that, I think, are worthy of the pause, simply the delay, 
that if you're going to have the selective implementation of a bill, it 
warrants the delay of that bill because, in this case, you have 
entities as disparate as the University of Virginia, where I went to 
graduate school, or UPS, saying, We are no longer going to offer health 
care to spouses and dependents. You have unintended consequences in 
terms of businesses cutting employment at 50, or you look at the number 
of hours that one works, saying, Okay, we're going to tap you below 30 
hours.
  There are very serious, unintended consequences that, again, I think, 
warrant the House's position of simply saying, Should we pause for a 
year since the President, himself, has decided to give pause to any 
number of parts to this bill?
  One last thought on context, and that is that the media would have 
you believe that this is a fight of epic proportions, of epic 
consequences, of epic nature. In fact, if you look at what has happened 
with shutdowns in the past--and this is in no way to minimize their 
effect or the significance of where we are--there have actually been 17 
shutdowns here over, basically, the last 35 years. I was here for the 
last one back in the mid-1990s. If you look at those 17, 12 occurred 
while Tip O'Neill was sitting in your Speaker's chair, Mr. Speaker. In 
many cases, it was a Democratic President with a Democratic Senate, 
with a Democratic House, wherein they disagreed on whether or not we 
should produce a nuclear carrier or how we were going to fund abortion 
or how we were going to fund some other portion of government.
  So I think that what we have here is a simple disagreement that has 
ground to a halt right now, but there is a larger context that, I 
think, is very, very important that the Republicans are trying to 
advance, which is: how we move forward in a way that doesn't hurt the 
American public.

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