[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 15058-15059]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BUDGET CONFERENCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Speaker, we are now on our third day of the 
Republican shutdown of the Federal Government. My constituents and 
people all across this country are disgusted with what they're seeing, 
the absence of an agreement on a simple idea: the American people have 
a right to a government that is open to serve them, but our government 
is closed. Eight hundred thousand men and women across the country have 
been placed on furlough because Speaker Boehner and the House 
Republican leadership will not bring up a clean continuing resolution 
to fund the government and keep the government open.
  Now, I would like to talk a little bit about what that means for my 
constituents, and first to say that I have extended office hours in my 
district office from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to make sure that my constituents 
have whatever help I can provide during this government shutdown to 
help navigate through the Federal Government, and that is staffed by my 
employees who have no guaranty they will even be paid.
  But I want to talk this morning about how we got here, not to assign 
blame to one side or the other but to suggest how we move forward, 
because we've heard from the Speaker these last few days and from many 
of the Republican leaders they just want to compromise; if the 
Democrats would just be willing to compromise and go to a conference 
committee, this would all work out, and that Republicans are interested 
in delaying health care reform and cutting spending and the Democrats 
refuse to negotiate on these issues.
  Well, this is actually completely false. In fact, look at this chart. 
We began with spending in the President's budget of $1.2 trillion. You 
can see how far there has already been compromise from the Democrats 
down from the enacted spending to the Ryan budget to the Senate budget 
and finally to the continuing resolution, which is very close to the 
Ryan budget--not a budget amount that we agree with but some people 
would be willing to compromise on.
  In fact, there was a budget that was passed by the House, a budget 
passed by the Senate, and we passed No Budget, No Pay, which I was a 
cosponsor of, to make sure this budget process proceeded; but the 
Speaker has refused, since that happened, to appoint conferees to a 
Budget Committee. That's the next step. That's how we get a budget, to 
appoint conferees who then have the responsibility of working out 
compromises.
  We wrote to the Speaker back in April, April 17. Here's a copy of the 
letter. Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen and I wrote to the Speaker 
urging him to appoint conferees so we could continue the budget 
process, but he's refused to do that.
  Then, just moments before the shutdown happened, Republicans said: 
Oh, let's go to conference on the funding bill, the continuing 
resolution, not on the budget. That, of course, was a vote to shut down 
the government, because that wasn't going to happen in 45 minutes. And 
so the government shut down, and this is now day three.
  You have to wonder: Why is it that the Republicans have refused to 
pass a clean funding bill that we are calling for? Well, one member of 
the House Republican caucus said:

       Now that we've jumped off the cliff and lit ourselves on 
     fire, we've entered the valley of the shadow of death. We've 
     got to keep running and hold together.

  Mr. Speaker, our country is facing very serious challenges today. Men 
and women in cities and towns all across our country don't know where 
to find work, don't know if they're going to be able to go to work. 
Seniors are nervous about whether they can rely on Social Security and 
Medicare, and young people are worried about whether they can afford to 
go to college. These issues are far too important for Republicans to 
refuse to negotiate simply as a matter of pride. Every Member of this 
House needs to put aside political posturing and act in the best 
interests of the people who sent us here.
  Rather than coming together to support commonsense solutions and 
policies that would strengthen our country, Speaker Boehner and the 
Republicans have decided to shut down the Federal Government until 
they're able to undermine the Affordable Care Act. For them, it has 
become an obsession.
  Earlier this week, one House Republican called the Affordable Care 
Act ``the most insidious law known to man.'' House Republicans compared 
this debate to the terrorist attacks of September 11. And when he held 
the floor for 21 hours, Senator Ted Cruz invoked the horrors of World 
War II and the Nazi regime when talking about health care reform.
  Mr. Speaker, this kind of hyperbole and this kind of plainly 
inflammatory rhetoric has no place in a serious discussion about the 
future of our country. For weeks, we've heard that the Republicans 
would refuse to fund the government until it dismantled or defunded the 
Affordable Care Act. This became their party's mantra until 2 days ago, 
because 2 days ago the Republicans stopped trying to defund ObamaCare 
for the first time and started to try to carve out programs to fund one 
by one. The very reason they brought this government to a screeching 
halt and closed it down was all of a sudden gone.
  So I ask my colleagues today: What's the problem now? What's the hold 
up on passing a clean funding bill to reopen government and then go to 
conference to work out all of the differences on many important policy 
issues?

[[Page 15059]]

  So, Mr. Speaker, I ask my Republican colleagues, my friends on the 
other side of the aisle, to do what's right for our country and demand 
that the Speaker bring a funding bill to the floor to open government 
and pass this resolution today.

                          ____________________