[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14868]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    SAD DAY FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, this shutdown was totally brought about by 
the Republican leadership. If you listened to our Democratic leader, 
Nancy Pelosi, when she spoke earlier, she made it quite clear that 
there wasn't any real disagreement with regard to the budget or the 
continuing resolution to keep the government going.
  The fact of the matter is that last night, the Republican leadership 
could have simply passed the clean Senate bill to keep the government 
running, at least for a short period of time, if further negotiations 
were necessary. But that's not what they wanted to do. They wanted to 
shut it down in the name of repealing or defunding the Affordable Care 
Act.
  We've already been through that. We had an election. The Affordable 
Care Act was passed 3 years ago. Those 30 or 40 million Americans who 
have no health insurance can actually sign up today. We should not be 
going through that exercise again for the 41st or 42nd or 43rd time.
  Do not believe the Republican leadership. They wanted to shut this 
place down. They have shut it down. And I don't see any effort to try 
to reopen it. It's a sad day for the American people.

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