[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 15027-15028]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday I made the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives John Boehner an offer I thought he could not refuse, 
but he did. House Republican leaders have demanded the Senate join them 
in a conference committee to work out budget differences. That seemed 
like a good idea to me. That is why Democrats yesterday asked consent 
to do exactly that, go to conference--on anything. You want to talk 
about spending; you want to talk about health care; you want to talk 
about agriculture; you want to talk about the post office, it does not 
matter. We are happy to do so. Our agreement that we proposed to them: 
whatever you want to talk about.
  So I formally offered that, first in a letter to the Speaker. I 
talked to him. Then I came to the floor here and reiterated the offer. 
My only condition: that the conferees negotiate in the light of day 
while the government is open for business. That did not seem too 
unreasonable.
  To my surprise, the Speaker refused and the Senate Republicans 
objected. House Republicans truly do not know what they want. They 
cannot take yes for an answer. We have agreed to their budget number, 
which we thought should be higher. We agreed to that. They want to go 
to conference. We agreed to that. But they have had trouble agreeing to 
anything for quite some time now.
  This spring, after years of Republicans loudly longing for a budget 
passed by the Senate, despite already having a budget with the force of 
law, we decided: Let's give them their way. We worked hard, led by 
Senator Murray, to have a budget that we completed after 5 o'clock in 
the morning.
  We voted on over 100 amendments. Then Senate Democrats, following 
what they said--they, the Republicans said they wanted, regular order. 
They said: Let's go to conference to work out the differences. They 
passed their budget; we passed ours. Guess what. After all of this 
haranguing about having a budget and regular order, they decided they 
did not like that so well.
  It was really very difficult to comprehend. When Republicans finally 
got what they said they wanted, it turned out they did not want it 
after all. Yesterday, the same story. Republicans asked to go to 
conference on a budget. Democrats agreed. Republicans objected. Those 
tactics truly are back to Orwellian. They believe that if you go east, 
you are really going west. If you are going north, you are really going 
south. You are not going down, you are going up. Whatever, obviously, 
they say does not really mean anything in reality.
  But maybe they really do not know what they want. Maybe they do not 
have a game plan. It is becoming more apparent every day. One of the 
House Republican tea party leaders, a Congressman from Indiana by the 
name of Stutzman, admitted this to one of the Washington newspapers 
yesterday. Here is what he said. Listen to this:

       We are not going to be disrespected. We have to get 
     something out of this.

  Now listen to this, the last phrase of his statement:

       But I don't know what that is.

  If there is any way I disrespected him, or we disrespected him, we do 
not want that to happen. We apologize. They want to get something out 
of this. Well, let's consider that. Except they do not know what they 
want. It is a little hard to make a deal there.
  Republicans should come to their senses and realize there is more 
than wounded pride on the line. The longer this Republican government 
shutdown persists, the harder it will be on our economy. I hope they 
can figure out what it is they want, before the damage to the economic 
recovery is even more irreversible than they have already created.
  It is obvious the strain of the self-inflicted shutdown is beginning 
to wear on many Republicans. Pick up the papers today. Listen to the 
news. There were reports of vicious infighting from yesterday's 
Republican caucus meeting. This is what one Republican said after the 
meeting:

       It was very evident to everyone in the room that the junior 
     Senator from Texas does not have a strategy. He never had a 
     strategy and could never answer questions

[[Page 15028]]

     about what the end game was. Just like Stutzman from 
     Indiana--that is the danger of following the tea party, 
     because you are following and you are headed off the cliff. 
     That is where we have been and that is where we already are, 
     trying to get off the cliff that they put us over.

  Tea party Republicans do not really want a way out of the government 
shutdown. I read here direct statements yesterday from one of their 
candidates--she is a Congressman. She ran for President. She said: 
Finally we've gotten what we want. We've shut down government.
  So I think the statements I have made about their being anarchists 
are pretty valid. They are glad the government is shut down. They do 
not believe in government. A government shutdown is the end game for 
them, obviously. Tea party Republicans do not really want a way out of 
this government shutdown. They like it the way it is.
  But in addition to the statement coming from the Republican Senate 
caucus, there are some rumblings over in the House. More than 20 
reasonable Republicans in the House have said on the record that they 
are ready to pass a way to fund this government right now.
  I was not a math major--far from it. But I can count. If those 20 
reasonable Republicans unite with 200 House Democrats, that is a 
majority in the House of Representatives. That would end the shutdown 
now. So I have a message for my mainstream Republican colleagues: If 
you ever hope to get out of this mess to end this Republican government 
shutdown, get rid of the tea party direction. Work with us. Help us 
reopen the government. We can start negotiations today.
  As everyone knows, I think, I had a meeting with Leader McConnell, 
Speaker Boehner, and Leader Pelosi last night at the White House. The 
Speaker said after the meeting--of course it was obvious during the 
meeting--the only thing that he cares about is ObamaCare. That is what 
this is all about. They do not care about anything else.
  We know what this government shutdown has done to our country 
already. General Clapper, one of the leaders in our intelligence 
gathering information around the world, has stated that 72 percent of 
people who work in our intelligence agencies are home watching TV, 
reading a book. They are not at work, protecting us from the bad people 
around the world--and there are lots of them.
  We have talked about our national parks here. It has really been bad 
for people coming to Nevada who want to recreate in our parks. But not 
only for them. It has hurt business in Nevada, as it has around the 
country.
  NIH. We all understand how important it is that people who are sick 
and ill have the ability to have the best care in the world. If you are 
at the end of the line and you are fortunate enough to be able to say: 
Well, maybe there is still another chance; they are doing something 
back in Washington at one of the National Institutes of Health; maybe 
they can help.
  Not now. They cannot do it now because of the Republicans.
  The Centers for Disease Control is not a very glamorous sounding 
name, but that is what it is about, controlling disease. Most of them 
are furloughed. Senator Harkin came on the floor yesterday and talked 
about a real serious problem. They could not figure out what it was. 
People were sick and dying. The Centers for Disease Control figured it 
out. It was because of pomegranate seeds coming from some other 
country. They work on these scourges every day because things come up 
that make people sick. We are in flu season now. They are not working 
on that.
  The second in command in the House of Representatives, Congressman 
Cantor, said yesterday: Well, that's okay. We know that there's a lot 
of problems around our country with the shutdown. But we are going to, 
one by one, reopen those agencies.
  It is so obvious. It is so obvious. This is all directed toward 
President Obama's signature legislation, ObamaCare. They want to 
piecemeal this and wind up trying to hurt ObamaCare. Even Dr. Coburn 
who is a medical doctor, never known for being a shrinking violet, has 
said: This is not the way to go. ObamaCare is funded, except for maybe 
10 percent.
  We are willing to sit down and talk about anything they want to talk 
about in conference. But the government has to open first. It is time 
for my Republican friends to defy their tea party overlords.
  Every day that passes the idea of shutting down the government in 
order to repeal ObamaCare is becoming so transparent and so bad for the 
country. No one--I mean, it was not very popular for them to do it 
anyway. Every day that goes by it is less popular. Considering that 
only a handful of Americans supported the strategy, as I said, to begin 
with, it is a bad sign for them, the Republicans.
  Millions of Americans have visited Federal marketplace exchanges over 
the last 3 days. The demand is so high that on some of the Web sites, 
they crash. This is not unprecedented. Google, when they first started, 
they experienced the same challenges. State-based exchanges have 
flourished virtually everywhere. Take, for example, my friend the 
Republican leader's State of Kentucky. More than 100,000 people have 
already visited the State's health care exchange and Web site. More 
than 10,000 people have filled out applications for health coverage, 
and more than 3,000 Kentucky families have already enrolled in new 
coverage. This shows the hunger the American people have to sign up for 
affordable health care.
  We have had Republicans come here and say: Oh, it is so bad for the 
job market. Throughout the press today--and I will only pick a few of 
them--for example, one out of the New York Times. Speaker Boehner said 
it is job killing; Ted Cruz, it is hurting the American people; Senator 
McConnell, it is a big reason we are turning into a nation of part-time 
workers.
  I am not going to go through all the economists, but they all say the 
same thing--it doesn't hurt jobs at all. Mark Zandi, of Moody's 
Analytics--who, by the way, was John McCain's chief economic adviser 
when he ran for President--said: I don't see ObamaCare as impacting the 
job market. A man by the name of Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economist 
who worked for President George W. Bush, when asked about how it 
affected the economy: Not a whole lot.
  There are many more quotes, but we get the picture. When the history 
books are written--and they will be written--ObamaCare will be seen as 
the greatest single step since Medicare to provide fairness to all 
Americans. The more America learns about the affordable care provided 
in ObamaCare, the more they like it. And the Republicans would be wise 
to abandon their impractical request to repeal it. It has been the law 
for 4 years.

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