[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 15137-15152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to talk about an aspect of the tea 
party government shutdown that has not gotten the attention it 
deserves. Sadly, the effects of this tea party shutdown do not stop at 
our water's edge. The

[[Page 15138]]

shutdown is putting our national security at risk. The senior Senator 
from California, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, has talked to 
us about how 72 percent of our intelligence employees are not working. 
They are not all useless or laggards or slackers. In fact, there is a 
high degree of professionalism in the CIA, NSA, and like agencies. To 
have close to three-quarters of them not on the job puts every American 
at risk.
  There is another area that is putting us at risk. We all know that 
the greatest threat to our national security and to that of Israel--or 
one of the greatest threats to our national security and the greatest 
threat to Israel is a nuclear Iran. In order to punish Iran for their 
pursuit of nuclear weapons, Republicans and Democrats, in a bipartisan 
way, led in many instances by two of my good friends here, the 
Democratic senior Senator from New Jersey Mr. Menendez and the 
Republican senior Senator from South Carolina Mr. Graham--they have 
come together to pass tough sanctions that would have a crippling 
effect on Iran's economy, and this body in a bipartisan way and the 
other body in a bipartisan way have passed those.
  Just last week we saw some of the first results and progress, as 
President Ruhani said he was open to talks on the nuclear program. Iran 
had been intransigent before that. We don't even know if they really 
want to give up nuclear weapons or whether this is a feint, but we 
certainly know the sanctions are having a dramatic effect. What has 
changed Iran's mind? Have they suddenly had a change of heart out of 
the blue? No. The only thing that changed their minds is the sanctions, 
and that is why they are at least acting differently than they have 
acted in the past. Who knows. Hopefully they may actually do something 
real if the sanctions continue. We know that these tough sanctions are 
a huge weight around the ankles of the Iranian economy.
  But right now, when Iran feels cornered for the first time, the 
shutdown of our government could well take that pressure off the 
Iranians, and it comes at exactly the wrong time. That is because the 
shutdown and its concomitant furloughs are preventing us from fully 
enforcing the sanctions, allowing the companies that are trying to do 
business with Iran to escape punishment and allowing the Iranian 
economy to expand faster than it normally would have. There are many 
companies that try to evade these sanctions, but the Federal Government 
has cops on the beat who have been, by and large, overwhelmingly 
successful in making sure nobody can slip through the cracks and do 
business with Iran. But now, because of the government shutdown and 
furloughs, those offices are greatly weakened.
  Two of the major offices in the Treasury Department that enforce 
sanctions--the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the Financial 
Crimes Enforcement Network--have only 30 of their 345 employees. Let me 
repeat that. Two of the most important offices that enforce sanctions 
have less than 10 percent of their employees. Ninety percent-plus are 
on furlough. They cannot work.
  The Office of Terrorist Financing and Intelligence--a vital part of 
our enforcing tough sanctions against Iran--is usually staffed by 10 
people. Right now they just have one--10 percent.
  The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control--the 
primary office responsible for enforcing these sanctions and punishing 
those who violate them--is also operating with a skeleton staff.
  Just at a time when we need the sanctions to continue to bite, this 
government shutdown is making it a lot easier for rogue actors to sell 
oil and trade with the Iranian regime. We all know that those who try 
to avoid sanctions find the weakest place. Now, with so few of our 
people on the job because of the shutdown, it is going to be a lot 
easier for them. New sanctions designations will halt. We will not be 
able to investigate sanction violations. We cannot punish those who 
have violated the sanctions. The government shutdown sends a dramatic 
and strong signal to those who seek to violate the sanctions and give 
the Iranian regime hope that they can continue to keep nuclear weapons. 
It could not come at a worse time. The Iranian sanctions have been our 
best pressure point, and the shutdown is letting the pressure off Iran 
at exactly the wrong time.
  We have seen a pattern over the last few days, and I have a feeling I 
know what the response from the other side of the aisle--particularly 
the junior Senator from Texas--will be. He will say: OK, Democrats, 
that is a good point. Let's fund the sanctions, and maybe tomorrow or 
the next day we will have a bill on the floor to restore those offices 
in the Treasury Department. Then maybe we will point out that the 
government shutdown is hurting middle-class students from getting 
college loans. Again, that was something that had bipartisan support. 
Then maybe the junior Senator from Texas or House Republicans will say: 
OK. Let's fund it too. After a while, it gets a little ridiculous.
  The House Republicans, and their seeming acquiescence to the junior 
Senator from Texas, have given the junior Senator from Texas a veto 
power over which parts of the Federal Government are funded and which 
are not. At the request of the junior Senator from Texas--who has 
fervently and passionately said don't fund the government unless 
ObamaCare is eliminated--the House Republicans have shut down 
government. Those actions are not a surprise. After all, the junior 
Senator from Texas said 10 months ago that he and the tea party ``have 
to be prepared to go as far as to shut the government down.'' It is not 
a surprise.
  Anyway, the Republicans have shuttered the entire Federal Government 
and they say they are willing to reopen it a piece at a time provided 
that piece is blessed by the junior Senator from Texas. To allow any 
one person to pick and choose which parts of the government can reopen 
is a cynical and ultimately extremely damaging way to run government. 
It is dangerous for the country, and it is obvious it will not succeed.
  I have one final point. It seems today's talking point from my 
Republican colleagues is: Let's talk. It is obvious they feel the 
pressure because America sees the intransigence of shutting down the 
government unless our colleagues in the House get 100 percent of what 
they want. But it is obvious when their talking point is ``let's 
talk,'' they left out a key point at the beginning of their new talking 
point. Because to only talk while the government is shut down does huge 
damage to millions of innocent people and to our country's economy. 
They forgot to say: Let's vote. Then let's talk. Their motto should be 
modified.
  Our motto is: Just vote. Vote to let government stay open. It will 
take a single vote in the House of Representatives, and then let's 
talk. To say ``let's talk'' while the government is shut down prolongs 
the devastation to our colleagues.
  I say to my Republican colleagues who have come up with this talking 
point ``let's talk,'' they forgot the first part of their talking 
point: Just vote, and then let's talk.
  I yield the floor and thank my colleague from Alabama for his 
courtesy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Madam President. I appreciate Senator 
Schumer's remarks about the Iran sanctions. They are very important. It 
is an action by the United States that I think has helped in a number 
of ways with the radicalism in Iran, and we need to keep it up.
  Yesterday, I heard Mr. Clapper--or maybe it was the day before--
testify before the Judiciary Committee, and he said he had a number of 
people not working. Senator Grassley said: If they are not critical 
people, then why do you need so many? If you have a critical job, you 
need enough people to do the critical duties. How many do you need? You 
must not need all these people. You said they are not important to us. 
I don't think Mr. Clapper had a very good answer to that.
  When someone raised the question of defense cuts under the Budget 
Control

[[Page 15139]]

Act, and he expressed concern about that, which I would share. I think 
Mr. Clapper is right to be concerned about it. So I asked Director 
Clapper: Do you know the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Have you ever 
heard of the Commander in Chief of the United States?
  The House--the Republican House, I must say--has a half dozen times 
or more, over several years, passed legislation that eases those cuts 
and finds other reductions in spending from other departments and 
agencies that have received no cuts and as a result reduces the burden 
on the Defense Department. Indeed, the Defense Department represents 
one-sixth of the U.S. budget and they are being asked to take one-half 
the cuts and don't think that counts in bringing down the war costs in 
Iraq and Afghanistan; that is entirely different. I am talking about 
the base defense budget that has taken half the cuts under the Budget 
Control Act. It is too much for the Defense Department. It ought to be 
spread around. The House has voted more than one-half dozen times to do 
that. It died in the Senate because I guess they want to utilize the 
military to threaten Republicans: If you don't do what we want, we are 
not going to fund your military.
  My goodness, the President is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. 
military. Doesn't he have a responsibility to make sure we are 
adequately funded? I have to say, I am just getting a little frustrated 
with that argument.
  First of all, I don't think he is required to lay off that many 
people. He indicated he was reviewing it. He was going to bring back 
more people, as he could have been doing all along, but I think it did 
allow another example of disastrous complaints beyond reality. One more 
thing. Senator Schumer, and many of our Democratic colleagues, have 
been conducting a sustained and direct attack on the millions of people 
who supported and identified with the tea party movement. Make no 
mistake about it, they don't respect the people in the tea party 
movement. They demean them in every way virtually every day in this 
body.
  The tea partiers believe in America and thought this U.S. Congress 
has turned into lunatics and are putting this country into bankruptcy 
by its spending too much and passing ObamaCare. Democrats passed 
ObamaCare in spite of the overwhelming objections by the American 
people. They did it without listening. The tea party spontaneously rose 
up, and it clobbered a bunch of Democratic House Members and Senators. 
It switched the whole majority in the House by a big number. So they 
don't like it.
  Everybody who opposes them and says: You are not listening to us, 
they are now demeaning and attacking. I think the American people and 
the people who identify with and support the tea party, either directly 
or indirectly, need to know that. I know the people in the tea party. 
They care about America. They love America. They can't understand what 
is going on here and they think they are moving us into bankruptcy and 
we forgot the entire concept of constitutional limited government.
  We have heard a lot of talk about the challenges facing the 
government during the funding lapse we are in. All of us want to see 
the government return to normal operations, and I certainly do, but 
what we seem to be losing sight of is the permanent consequences--the 
debt consequences--of the Affordable Care Act. It needs to be a part of 
this discussion. The Democrats have refused to listen. They basically 
blocked any effort in the Senate to reform in any significant way the 
Affordable Care Act. It has been going on ever since it passed. Their 
goal is to put up a wall around it so if anything comes up, they will 
not listen to it. They will not consider it. They will not discuss it. 
It is a fact. It is a done deal. We can't even discuss it.
  The House has a right to fund what they want to fund under the 
Constitution and not fund what they choose not to fund. They are trying 
to initiate and force a discussion on one of the most important issues 
facing America. One of the things that is so dangerous about this law 
has not been properly discussed, and I wish to talk about it.
  A lot of us are going to donate our pay during this furlough to 
charity. I certainly will. I wish our friends would begin to be more 
concerned for the private sector workers. There are millions of 
American workers who will be permanently affected by the Affordable 
Care Act. They will be hammered by it. Eventually full funding will 
resume to our government. We know that. This furlough will end.
  If this ObamaCare remains in full effect, the consequences for 
American workers are going to be lasting and damaging, as will the 
consequences to the United States Treasury and our financial condition.
  In particular, as ranking member of the Budget Committee, I would 
like to focus on the huge and fundamental accounting manipulation that 
lies at the center of this health care law. I am going to make some 
statements, and if anybody has detailed objections or rejections to it, 
I want to see them, and I will respond to them. But I am correct in 
what I am saying, and I look forward to any discussion that anybody 
would like to have. So far people don't want to talk; they want to 
ignore the problem.
  We have to deal with these accounting manipulations because it is a 
colossal blow to our Treasury. The Affordable Care Act was packaged and 
sold based on a promise that I am going to disprove. The American 
people knew it wasn't true anyway. Before a joint session of the 
Congress, the President of the United States said and promised this: 
``I will not sign a [health care] plan that adds one dime to our 
deficits, now or any time in the future, period.'' That is a bold 
statement. It is as good as ``read my lips.''
  As I addressed earlier this week, hundreds of billions of dollars in 
Medicare savings to the hospital insurance, HI, trust fund were double-
counted under the legislation that was passed--at least $400 billion 
over the 2010 to the 2019 10-year period. I asked for an analysis 
before the bill passed on December 23. We ended up voting on December 
24, Christmas Eve. They rammed it through before Scott Brown, who would 
have denied them the 60th vote, was elected in Massachusetts--liberal 
Massachusetts--on the commitment he would be the vote to kill 
ObamaCare, but they were able to get it through before he was able to 
take office.
  The night before we voted, I asked CBO about it. I insisted they give 
an answer, and they did. They said:

       The key point is that savings to the HI trust fund--

  That is Medicare--

     under PPACA--

  That is ObamaCare--

     would be received by the government only once, so they cannot 
     be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the 
     same time, pay for current spending on the other parts of the 
     legislation--

  ObamaCare--

     or on other programs. . . . To describe the full amount of HI 
     trust fund savings----

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have an 
additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. The CBO went on to conclude to say:

       To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as 
     both improving the government's ability to pay future 
     Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of 
     Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of 
     those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the 
     government's fiscal position.

  What a statement that was. In fact, CBO estimated that if Medicare 
savings were truly set aside to pay future Medicare benefits, the new 
health care law would not decrease but increase the deficit over the 
first 10 years and subsequent decade. They said it would increase the 
deficit.
  But there is a lesser known, equally shocking, account gimmick that I 
wanted to mention today; that is, how it was done with Social Security. 
They have obtained another $100 billion over the next 10 years by 
double-counting Social Security money.

[[Page 15140]]

  My time is up, and I could explain it in more detail, but we have to 
understand this. According to the Congressional Government 
Accountability Office--and I asked them not too long ago when they 
issued a report--that over the next long-term implementation of 
ObamaCare, it would add $6.2 trillion to the debt of the United States. 
That is almost as much as the liabilities that Social Security has and 
fully accounted for--my budget staff tells me that the ObamaCare 
legislation will be harder to fund and add more to the deficit----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time is up.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Than Social Security will under the current problems. 
We need to stop digging the hole and we need to start fixing Medicare 
and Social Security and not adding other programs we can't pay for.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. FLAKE. Madam President, I know this is not a town that has ever 
been known for having a long memory. In fact, the recent warning bells 
rung about our deficits and our debt have predictably faded into the 
background with all of the attention on the rocky start to this fiscal 
year.
  Last month, the Congressional Budget Office released its long-term 
budget outlook. Headlines and news stories associated with that release 
use words such as grim and gloomy and raised alarm about our ``long-
term fiscal crisis.'' The very first line in that report reminds us 
that between 2009 and 2012, the U.S. Government recorded the largest 
budget deficits--when compared to the size of the economy--in over half 
a century.
  Reflecting on the current state of play, CBO noted that the Federal 
debt currently stands at roughly three-quarters of our gross domestic 
product. More alarming, they predict our Federal debt will match the 
size of our economy or be equal to 100 percent of GDP by the year 2038.
  I understand the temptation to roll our eyes and politely suggest 
that those facts and figures are of more interest to green-eyeshaded 
bean counters or to simply wave them off as last month's news. Frankly, 
this is made much easier when the administration says things such as 
``we don't have an urgent debt crisis'' and when appropriations bills 
come to the floor at levels that make little sense given our current 
fiscal realities.
  Unfortunately, these facts and figures only tell part of the story. 
The CBO provides us insight into the impact these facts and figures 
will have on the economy and the Federal budget deficit. If the growth 
in our Federal debt is left unchecked, we could eventually see a 
further drop in private investment, an increase in interest payments, a 
decrease in Congress's flexibility, and, obviously, a risk of fiscal 
crisis.
  CBO notes that ``the unsustainable nature of the federal government's 
current tax and spending policies presents lawmakers and the public 
with difficult choices . . . To put the federal budget on a sustainable 
path for the long term, lawmakers would have to make significant 
changes to tax and spending policies.''
  We all know that given the current environment, it is difficult to do 
that. It is difficult when we have a problem just bringing routine 
spending measures to the President's desk. So this is not an easy 
conclusion to hear.
  But within our dim current fiscal landscape and even dimmer outlook, 
there has been at least one bright spot. In 2011, Congress agreed to 
and the President signed into law the Budget Control Act--the BCA. This 
included statutory discretionary spending caps as well as automatic, 
across-the-board spending cuts for our failure to enact additional 
deficit reduction measures.
  Certainly trimming Federal spending via across-the-board 
sequestration cuts is an inelegant means, at best, of addressing our 
spending problem. It is often referred to as a ``blunt instrument.'' At 
a minimum, it is a lazy way to legislate. I believe I join a number of 
my colleagues when I say I am open to providing additional flexibility 
while staying within the budget caps with respect to the sequester. But 
we simply can't deny that locking in discretionary spending caps and 
enforcing them with automatic sequestration has yielded some of the 
most significant spending cuts we have seen in Congress in years.
  As my colleague from Tennessee, who recently came to the floor, said, 
2 years ago, discretionary spending stood at nearly $1.5 trillion. Last 
year, under the BCA spending caps, that number dropped to just under $1 
trillion. This year, if no changes occur to the sequester enforcement 
cap, we will be at $976 billion. That is a significant drop. That is 
significant. And that is a good thing.
  A recent Wall Street Journal story entitled ``The GAO's Unheralded 
Victory on Spending'' quoted the head of Americans for Tax Reform as 
concluding that we had ``made a fundamental shift in the size of the 
government equation.''
  While runaway spending on mandatory programs represents an ever-
present issue we have to get our arms around, the BCA spending caps and 
sequester have put real and meaningful downward pressure on 
discretionary spending that represents about a third of our Federal 
budget.
  My colleague from Kentucky, the minority leader, recently pointed out 
that the BCA which passed 2 years ago ``actually reduced government 
spending for 2 years in a row for the first time since the Korean 
War.'' I agree with him when he urges that we not walk away from the 
spending reductions we have already promised taxpayers.
  I have made no secret of the fact that I do not favor the strategy of 
tying the funding of ObamaCare to the current continuing resolution. As 
the resulting shutdown drags on and there are more stories about the 
fights over funding next year, and then the coming debate over the debt 
ceiling, I find myself favoring this strategy even less. It is entirely 
likely that the sequester opponents will use the larger debate to push 
to undo the gains we have made of meaningful spending cuts by 
abolishing the sequester by replacing it with meaningless savings, 
budget gimmicks, or even new taxes.
  Far from a conspiracy theory, in recent months there have already 
been calls for a 2-year sequester hiatus. I agree with Taxpayers for 
Common Sense when they say that ``this may be the convenient answer, 
but it is no way to get our fiscal house in order.''
  It is my hope we can find a way through this shutdown sooner rather 
than later. It is also my hope that we can at some point have a real 
conversation about the long-term drivers of our crushing debt that 
underlie our need to regularly hike the debt ceiling. In the meantime, 
and as this debate unfolds, I urge my colleagues to resist any effort 
to undermine the sequester-enforced Budget Control Act spending caps.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, House Speaker Boehner is sending the 
Senate a series of bills to put one Band-Aid at a time on the House 
Republicans' government shutdown. It is an obvious attempt to fool the 
American people into thinking House Republicans are acting to end the 
shutdown. But their transparent tactic is not fooling many people, and 
here is why: The people of this country know the harm of the government 
shutdown isn't about the handful of programs that House Republicans 
will dangle in front of us. The House Republican gambit will not put 
food inspectors back to work. It will not put Centers for Disease 
Control experts back to work tracking outbreaks of infectious diseases. 
It is not going to reopen Head Start classrooms for kids. Their 
piecemeal approach won't restart lending to small businesses or bring 
back the FAA inspectors who make sure commercial aircraft are safe, and 
it won't restore hundreds of other vital services and functions.
  No matter how many rifleshot bills the House Republicans try, all 
they do is leave our government full of holes. We could spend months 
legislating in bits and pieces while House Republicans ignore the 
obvious solution: The House should vote on the clean continuing 
resolution the Senate has sent

[[Page 15141]]

to them, because that vote will end the shutdown.
  The Republican bits-and-pieces strategy is like smashing a piece of 
crockery with a hammer, gluing two or three bits back together today, a 
couple more tomorrow, and two or three more the day after that. House 
Republicans should stop before they do any more damage, put down the 
hammer, pick up the Senate's continuing resolution, and at least put it 
to a vote.
  I heard one Republican on the Senate floor yesterday argue that we 
should adopt the piecemeal approach because, after all, he said, under 
regular order, we pass separate appropriations bills for different 
parts of the government one at a time. While that is true, it is 
irrelevant. We have a mechanism for keeping the government open while 
we go through the regular order process. It is called a continuing 
resolution, and it keeps the full government open while we adopt 
appropriations bills one at a time.
  Five days ago, the Senate passed, for the third time, a continuing 
resolution to keep the government open and sent it to the House. It is 
well past time for Speaker Boehner to bring it to a vote.
  Republicans want to negotiate changes in the Affordable Care Act. Of 
course we will talk about that once the government is functioning, but 
we should not and will not allow the U.S. Government to be held hostage 
by the Republicans while we are talking about the Affordable Care Act 
or any other subject which they or we wish to talk about.
  I am keenly aware, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, that 
one of the most devastating effects of this Republican shutdown is its 
damage to our national security. Already our men and women in uniform 
have been asked to operate under the damaging effects of sequestration. 
Those cuts have done serious harm to our military readiness and 
military families, and the shutdown is making things far worse.
  Because of the House Republican shutdown, workers at the Defense 
Department maintenance depots around the country who should be 
repairing and preparing vehicles, ships, and aircraft for combat, are 
instead furloughed, along with hundreds of thousands of other 
Department of Defense civilians.
  Training exercises have largely come to a halt. Anyone who thinks 
that is no big deal has never spent any time with our men and women in 
uniform. The key factor in our military's effectiveness isn't our 
sophisticated weapons systems, as important as they are; it is the 
highly trained men and women who employ those weapons. Every day of 
this shutdown wears away the sharp edge of their readiness to respond 
to crises around the world.
  Some troops and their families won't get tuition assistance. Most 
travel is suspended, including many permanent changes of station. That 
means military families scheduled to move to a new location who may 
have already sold a home at their old duty location or committed to a 
lease or a mortgage at their new location, and spouses who need to 
start a job search, face financial loss and disruption and uncertainty 
in their lives. Our troops and their families can't even go to their 
on-post commissaries because they are closed.
  The bill we passed last week to ensure our troops would receive 
paychecks is all well and good, but that did not address the many 
shortfalls our troops and their families face during this shutdown.
  Another truly outrageous example is that the families of the brave 
men and women who were killed while defending this Nation will see a 
delay in the payment of death benefits because of this shutdown.
  Some may say, You are right, these problems for our national security 
are intolerable. Let's pass a bill to fix them.
  We have. The Senate passed a continuing resolution three times, the 
last one 5 days ago, which would keep the government functioning. 
Speaker Boehner refuses to allow the House to vote on the Senate-passed 
continuing resolution. No matter how many piecemeal bills the Speaker 
sends to us here in the Senate, he will be leaving out millions of 
Americans who will continue to suffer from the shutdown that he and tea 
party-dominated Republicans have created. Every day they spend 
obsessing over ObamaCare is one more day of unfairness and uncertainty 
for our troops and their families. Every day of the House Republicans' 
destructive submission to the tea party is another day food is not 
inspected, it is another day FBI agents are working without pay, it is 
another day the SBA is not approving loans for small businesses, it is 
another day scientists are barred from their labs and on and on.
  Speaker Boehner can bring this chaos to a halt by bringing the 
Senate's continuing resolution to the floor of the House for a vote. 
The Senate has voted three times on House versions of continuing 
resolutions. Speaker Boehner refuses to vote even once on the Senate 
bill. Why? This is the question, by the way, the media has not yet 
asked Speaker Boehner. Why? Why has he not brought to the floor of the 
House the Senate-passed continuing resolution? Here is the answer, and 
it is a stunning answer: Because it might pass. You heard me right. The 
reason Speaker Boehner is not bringing the continuing resolution passed 
in the Senate to the floor of the House for a vote is because it is 
going to pass.
  That is anathema. It would be anathema--anathema--to the Speaker of 
the House for a continuing resolution to pass if it depended upon 
Democratic votes. It is his policy not to depend on any Democratic 
votes to pass legislation in the House. The policy of the Speaker is 
truly the epitome of rank partisanship. In fact, I do not know of a 
clearer example of extreme partisan policy than Speaker Boehner's 
refusal to hold a vote on bills that would rely on some Democratic 
votes to pass.
  One of Speaker Boehner's Republican colleagues, Congressman Dent from 
Pennsylvania, has verified this sad fact. Here is what Congressman Dent 
said last night on PBS's NewsHour.
  I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 4 additional 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEVIN. Here is what Congressman Dent said:

       I do believe it's imperative that we do have a clean 
     funding bill to fund the government.

  Then he continued:

       That was the intent of the Republican leadership all along, 
     but obviously there were a few dozen folks in the House 
     Republican Conference who weren't prepared to vote for a 
     clean bill--

  Here is his conclusion. This is now a Republican Congressman speaking 
last night, saying:

     . . . a few dozen folks in the House Republican Conference 
     who weren't prepared to vote for a clean bill, and that's why 
     we're in the situation we're in right now.

  That is an astonishing report of abdication of leadership in the 
House of Representatives. What an incredible statement about the 
stranglehold that a few dozen ideological zealots now have on the 
Republican Party in the House of Representatives. It is an 
extraordinary moment in history when a Speaker of the House allows a 
few dozen Members of Congress to bring the government of this Nation to 
a standstill.
  When we cut through all the claims and all the counterclaims, all the 
press conferences, all the photo-ops, there is one unassailable, 
indisputable fact that remains: The Senate has passed a continuing 
resolution to keep the government open, and Speaker Boehner refuses to 
bring it to a vote in the House of Representatives.
  It need not be this way. All that is required to break the 
stranglehold that the tea party has on House Republicans is for Speaker 
Boehner to bring the Senate-passed continuing resolution that would 
reopen the government to the floor of the House for a vote. I urgently 
hope he will do so, and I hope that every hour until he does, he is 
asked to defend his refusal to do so.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak for 2 minutes and to be

[[Page 15142]]

followed by Senator Enzi for the normal time he was allocated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, we share being attorney generals of 
our States, and I just wish to take a moment to express my sincere and 
deep thanks--and from all of us--to the men and women who protect us 
every day, the Capitol Police. We had a very serious incident 
yesterday. Our people rallied and responded in an appropriate way. I 
believe they conducted themselves in a professional way.
  For example, I saw one young man. He said he had heard and responded 
immediately, was running toward the scene. We think: Well, that is OK. 
That is what they do. That is what they are supposed to do.
  We need to understand, when one of our young men and women are 
responding to a scene of a firing, of weapons discharged, they do not 
know what is there. In this environment, it could be a very serious 
thing. Their very life is at stake every time. Everyplace they stand on 
our streets, everyplace they stand in our building, the Capitol, and 
our office buildings, they are standing there subject to a threat by 
somebody who could appear out of nowhere with deadly force, and they do 
it with professionalism and courage every day.
  We have been very fortunate in seeing this Capitol be well protected, 
and I wish to express my appreciation for them and all who place their 
lives at risk every day to protect the operational functions of this 
government.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Alabama 
for his comments. I too want to add my thanks and appreciation for law 
enforcement people all over the United States who are doing their job 
and often have to do things such as give tickets. They do not get 
anything but bad news and grief for it, but they are out there 
protecting us at the same time and they definitely deserve credit, our 
admiration, and our prayers.
  Madam President, I also wish to comment a little bit on what the 
Senator from Michigan said with his indisputable facts. The 
indisputable fact is that we are only where we are right now with a 
government shutdown and the attempts to get a continuing resolution 
through because Congress did not do its job, the Senate did not do its 
job, the job we have to pass spending bills. If we had passed the 
spending bills--and there are 12 of them--if we passed the 12 spending 
bills, there would not be a need for a continuing resolution.
  What is a continuing resolution? It is permission for government to 
continue functioning as it has been functioning, spending one-twelfth 
of what they spent the year before for each month until we finally come 
up with a spending bill.
  The way the law is written, we are supposed to have a budget by April 
15 and that is a very significant day and it is an intentional day. 
Then, right after that, we are supposed to start doing spending bills, 
and we are supposed to allocate the amount of money we want each 
agency, program, department to spend.
  We have not done that for years. Consequently, we get into this bind 
where we are saying: Go ahead and spend money, and we will figure it 
out later.
  We have had a sequester, and the way the sequester works is it is 
supposed to be a 2.3-percent reduction from each agency, program, 
department. We did continuing resolutions last year. We did continuing 
resolutions for at least 7 months--probably 7\1/2\, maybe 8 months. So 
they got to continue spending what they had been spending the year 
before.
  They knew a sequester was coming because Congress again did not do 
its work and come up with an alternate way to fund government. So they 
only had 4 months left to take their 2.3 percent out of their total 
spending, which would be the whole spending for the year. Do you know 
what that does? That makes it 5.3 percent.
  But that is not bad enough. We have an administration that sent out 
word to make it hurt, and we have an administration that also took care 
of Washington but did not take care of the people out in the 
hinterlands of Wyoming--Wyoming and the rest of the United States--
people who are out there actually doing the work, person-to-person, 
that is supposed to be done with what we are funding. Instead, it went 
to a lot of administration.
  I had some people in this week from the Head Start program, and they 
showed me how they were cut 7.5 percent. What part of 2.3 percent would 
7.5 percent be? Part of that is that 5.3 percent because it came so 
late. But it is 7.5 percent because 2.5 percent of that goes to fund 
the Federal Government in Washington. That is not where the work is 
done. That is where the reports are done. That is where the regulations 
are done. That is where the things are done that stymie the people out 
there who are having to actually help the people.
  The Civil Air Patrol came to me. They do search and rescue from the 
air when people are lost around Wyoming. They said: We are being cut 60 
percent. I said: What part of 2.3 percent would 60 percent be? They are 
even taking three of their five airplanes. I said: If they do not have 
any money, how can they take your airplanes? How would they have the 
money to fly them anywhere?
  It is just one more of those things where the administration is 
saying make them feel the pain. Of course, part of that was closing 
down White House tours. How much can it cost for a self-guided White 
House tour? That is what they are. They are self-guided. You get a 
brochure. It is my understanding it is about an $18,000 savings. That 
is nothing compared to what we are working with.
  We have $9 billion a year worth of duplication just on things under 
health and education and labor and pensions--$9 billion in duplication. 
What is $18,000? Why couldn't we take a look at those budgets in detail 
and get rid of duplication? This is duplication that is evaluated by 
the White House. But when we have a shutdown, we do not do that. We do 
not eliminate any of that.
  Everybody has seen the World War II Memorial with the barricades. 
Ever since the World War II Memorial went up, I have never seen 
barricades there. I have been down there in the middle of the night and 
been able to walk through the World War II Memorial or any of the other 
memorials down there. I do not think I could use the restroom, and 
there is probably some justification for having the restrooms closed 
because there is the problem of cleaning them--what would require some 
additional personnel--but just to walk through things?
  We are making progress, though, because they also barricaded off 
Lincoln Park. It is a children's playground up here on the Hill. There 
were pictures in the paper the other day of a little girl looking at 
the sign on the gate that was locked saying that the park was closed. I 
am pleased to report that yesterday that sign was gone, kids were 
playing in the park. There is no cost to that. So there is no purpose 
in having any kind of a shutdown regarding that.
  The Smithsonian out here is a national park, and there are streets 
that go through the national park. They go through it one way 
primarily, but they do not have any additional cost to them. They do 
not serve anything. But they were blocked off. You could not go through 
streets that people normally drive through on any given day.
  In my own State, Jackson Hole--if you are driving from Dubois to 
Jackson, on the right-hand side of the road is a gorgeous view of the 
Tetons. These are some lands left over from the Alps that God had, so 
he put them in Wyoming. People like to stop and take pictures of them, 
particularly at this time of year because the aspens are turning to 
gold and they are mixed in with the pine trees. There is a river that 
runs through there and then there are these majestic mountains.
  The turnouts along that road are barricaded. You cannot turn out. You 
could not turn out to fix a flat tire. You could not turn out if you 
needed a nap. You cannot turn out to take a picture. Why? How did they 
get the barricades? How much did they have to spend for the barricades? 
How much did

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they have to spend to have somebody go out and put up those barricades?
  Incidentally, if you drive along the GW Parkway out here, it is the 
same way. The little turnouts that are along there are barricaded. 
Where did we get all these barricades? If it was a business and they 
treated their customers that way, they would be out of business, and 
they would deserve to be out of business. We should be operating 
differently than that.
  I did notice Air Force is going to play Navy tomorrow. But the 
justification is there is some revenue for that, and there is. If you 
charge admission to those things, and they are highly popular sporting 
events, there will be a lot of people who go and they will pay a lot of 
money for it and it will exceed the cost of putting it on at the venue. 
That would be the government making money. There is an oxymoron.
  But Yellowstone Park is in my State. Yellowstone was the first 
national park. In fact, it was the first park in the world. It is a 
huge park. In fact, it is the size of Connecticut. It sits up there in 
the corner of Wyoming. A lot of people go through Yellowstone in order 
to get to Idaho or Montana or maybe Montana folks trying to get down to 
Wyoming. But that is all closed off now.
  What is interesting to me is that if you do drive through there, you 
pay a fee. It is actually revenue. Now, of course, when I brought that 
up, I was reminded that the revenue goes to the general fund. But I had 
to say: Do you know where the money for the national parks comes from? 
It comes from the general fund. So if you do not collect the money, you 
will not have the money to put back into the park.
  Not only that, there are concessionaires who pay to be able to sell 
gas and food and lodging in Yellowstone Park. Their customers cannot 
get to them. I do not think we relieved them of paying the fee they 
have to pay. I am pretty sure the concessionaires were expecting about 
$4.5 million worth of business this month--not the busiest month but an 
important month. I think there are ways we could have continued to 
collect revenue, but we are not doing it. Let's make it hurt.
  We are here with this continuing resolution. The last vote I got to 
do was actually a vote to have a conference committee. It wasn't any 
demand from the House, it was a request for a conference committee. 
What happens in a conference committee? The leader appoints some people 
from here, in conjunction with the minority leader. They appoint some 
in the House. They get together and try to work this out. But, no, that 
was voted down by the Democrats, so we are not going to have that.
  I have a lot more that I would say. I realize my time has expired. We 
are in this position because we have been doing a bad job of governing.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, we are in day 4 of a tea party 
Republican shutdown. We need to be very clear as to how we got here. 
The Senate majority leader negotiated with the Speaker of the House, 
and after a long negotiation in which the Senate made major 
concessions, we agreed to pass a 6-week funding bill for services of 
the government, to keep services open while we negotiate the larger 
issues around the budget.
  We passed a bill with the funding levels asked for by the House 
Republicans. Republicans asked that we continue funding below the 
levels we believe are necessary to grow the economy for 6 weeks. Rather 
than having a government shutdown, at the time we believed it was in 
the interests of the American people, of all of those who provide those 
important services to us, that we, in fact, agree with the House on a 
6-week extension. We sent it over to them, asked for by the Speaker, 
agreed to by the Senate. There it has sat.
  Let me quote again from Congressman Dent--a Republican colleague of 
Speaker Boehner's--who said last night on ``PBS NewsHour'':

       I do believe it's imperative that we do have a clean 
     funding bill, a straight funding bill to fund the government. 
     That was the intent of the Republican leadership all along. 
     But obviously there were a few dozen folks in the House 
     Republican conference who were not prepared to vote for a 
     clean bill and that is why we are in the situation we are in.

  ``A few dozen folks''--part of this tea party wing. He said: That is 
why we are where we are today.
  You can overcome that very simply. Just bring the bill that the 
Speaker said he wanted, that we were willing to agree to for short-term 
funding of Federal services, bring it to the floor, and those few dozen 
folks can vote no and everybody else can vote yes. Then we would have 
the government back open. So it is truly a question of just letting the 
House vote. Just vote. Right now, today, before 5:00, we could be done 
with this irresponsible action. We could then make sure the Federal 
Government can pay its bills and not default and at the same time go to 
conference to negotiate the larger budget issues, which we need to do, 
but that is not what is happening.
  So it is now day 4. Government services are still closed. The bill 
that could open them--which has a majority vote, which has Republicans 
and Democrats--is sitting in the House because admittedly Republican 
Members of the House are saying a few dozen folks did not like it.
  Well, in our great democracy, our Founders said majority rules, but 
somehow we seem to have forgotten that around here. We have elections. 
The person who gets the majority wins. The others are not happy. They 
lose. Majority rules. Same thing happens on legislation.
  So now we are in a situation with a group defined as ``a few dozen 
folks'' in the House driving the train because there is no leadership 
in the House to bring up the vote and be able to pass this continuing 
resolution with a bipartisan vote.
  We are paying a very big cost right now as a country waiting for the 
House to vote. Nearly 800,000 people have been laid off--800,000 
people. We are just barely coming out of the recession. We are coming 
back. We are creating jobs--not enough. When this President came in, we 
had six people looking for work for one job. Now it is down to three 
people looking for work for one job. That is better. It is not good 
enough. There is more to do, and we all know it. So what is the 
response? Well, let's just lay off 800,000 people in the middle of this 
effort to try to bring a middle class roaring back in this country.
  There are about 7,500 people in my State of Michigan who are 
providing important services, people who are in middle-class jobs, have 
a mortgage, have at least one car payment, many sending their kids to 
college, trying to make sure they can care for their families, proud of 
what they do providing various public services that we all benefit 
from, and they are now sitting and waiting.
  It is costing our country about $300 million a day--$300 million a 
day--in lost wages and productivity, $300 million a day that we cannot 
afford to lose. This could all be ended in 5 minutes if the Speaker of 
the House would just allow a vote on a bill that contains the funding 
levels that the Speaker himself asked for, not those that we would like 
to see because on a longer term negotiation, we are going to fight very 
hard to increase opportunities for education and innovation, focusing 
more on economic growth and jobs. This is a number asked for for a 
short-term continuing resolution for 6 weeks. They evidently cannot 
take ``yes'' for an answer.
  Today I had an opportunity to meet a wonderful little boy named Kai 
who is 2 years old. He and his mom Anna were with us talking about the 
impact on the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease 
Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and other public health 
functions for our country and what it means to families.
  Kai was born with a heart defect. He has had two bypass surgeries now 
in just his 2 little years of life. Thanks to a clinical trial at the 
Children's National Health System, Kai was able to get innovative 
treatment that he needs. He was running all over the place this 
morning, a great success story.
  The things we do together as a country are what we should be proud 
of. The

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work that is being done by our doctors and researchers at places such 
as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration are literally 
saving lives. These men and women who are now furloughed, not working 
because of the shutdown, have gone through years of training. They are 
dedicated. They love what they do. These are some of the top experts on 
infectious diseases and food safety and cancer research in the country 
and in the world. Right now they are sitting at home, maybe watching 
us, trying to figure out what the heck is going on--or stronger 
language. They are not allowed to work. If they are working, they are 
not working with pay, all because of a few dozen folks in the House of 
Representatives, tea party folks who are running the show in the House 
who have decided they want to shut the entire government down over the 
Affordable Care Act, over the fact that we believe--the country 
believes there had to be a way to find affordable insurance for 30 
million folks who have not been able to find and purchase affordable 
insurance.
  The director of the division at the CDC that monitors food-borne 
illnesses--scary stuff like E. coli outbreaks--said recently he has 
three people working in his whole department right now--three people 
for our country monitoring food-borne illnesses, three people in charge 
of tracking every possible case of food-borne illness in the entire 
country.
  This needs to be a wake-up call. It is time to get the government 
open so that people can go back to work who are in positions to monitor 
and protect our public health, the defense of this country, educational 
opportunities, and the safety of our country. Get these CDC officials 
back to work and make sure our families are safe.
  CBS News reports that the Centers for Disease Control headquarters, 
which is in Atlanta, GA, is a ghost town. Folks who monitor infectious 
diseases have 6,000 employees in Atlanta, GA, and they are calling it a 
ghost town--in America, the greatest country in the world. The Director 
of the CDC, the Nation's top doctor in charge of infectious diseases, 
said he is ``losing sleep'' because ``I do not know that we will be 
able to find and stop the things that might kill people.''
  I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Let me go on and conclude. We heard on the floor 
earlier from the junior Senator from Texas, who spoke eloquently about 
the great work being done by the veterans health care system. It is 
unfortunate that it took a government shutdown for my colleague, I 
might say through the Chair, to understand how important a completely 
government-run health system is. The VA is completely government run 
and funded.
  My colleagues who are opposing people buying private insurance 
through private exchanges and making their own decisions about what 
works for them, who are saying it is the end of the world if families 
can buy insurance that is more affordable for them and that they can 
actually get what they are paying for because insurance companies 
cannot kick them off when they get sick or block them from getting 
insurance if they have a preexisting condition--they are saying that is 
awful, but a completely government-run health care system called the VA 
should be funded.
  I happen to agree with that. Our system through the VA is important 
for veterans. We need to keep it funded. We need to keep the CDC, the 
National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and every other part of our 
important system funded.
  The House needs to vote.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DONNELLY. First, I wish to thank the Capitol Hill police and the 
Secret Service for their bravery, their heroism, and their work, not 
only yesterday but every day, to keep this Capitol safe and to keep the 
people in it safe. We are in their debt.
  The people of Indiana all want jobs. We want to go to work. We want 
and we know the dignity that comes with a good day's labor and the 
chance to take care of our family. The people in Indiana have told me 
time after time, and they have said it very clearly: Joe, focus on 
jobs, focus on the basics.
  I couldn't be prouder of my home State. Every day I am thankful I 
have the amazing privilege to represent all Hoosiers in the Senate. But 
our economy in Indiana isn't as strong as we would like it to be. The 
national unemployment rate is 7.3 percent; Indiana, 8.1. Indiana's 
median household income declined 13.2 percent from 2000 to 2012 and it 
lags behind the national average. We have dropped to 40th among States 
in per capita income. We have so much work to do in my home State and 
in our country.
  As you know, I am an optimist by nature, but I am incredibly 
disheartened by what I have seen in Washington recently. Some in 
Congress are playing a game of chicken with our jobs, with our economy, 
and with our future. Because these folks haven't gotten their way, 
thousands of Hoosiers are furloughed and are not receiving paychecks, 
the paychecks that help them feed their families, pay for college, and 
invest their hard-earned money in the local-run businesses.
  Many of the good people at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, 
IN, who keep our troops in Afghanistan and around the world safe, were 
sent home recently. They can't do their critical work that keeps our 
Nation safe.
  The demands of a few here have caused the scientists at the Centers 
for Disease Control to be unable to go to work. These actions have also 
caused many of the patriots at Fort Wayne's Air National Guard Station 
and Grissom Air Reserve Base and at Terre Haute to have their work and 
their operations idled.
  We are now at a point in the debate where some are putting our 
economy at risk simply to advance their own political agendas. These 
folks are shutting down operations across our Nation and in my beloved 
home State, and that hurts our still recovering economy.
  We have so much work to do to move Indiana and our Nation forward, 
and Congress isn't helping. We talk all the time about providing 
certainty to our business friends. Hoosier businesses thrive on hard 
work, creativity, and teamwork. They also deserve a government that 
provides certainty, a steady hand in choppy seas. They don't need a 
government that creates the storm.
  Most folks back home think Congress can play some role in improving 
the economy, even if that role is simply not to make things worse. But 
over the past year, Congress has made and continues to make things much 
more difficult. It is embarrassing that the actions of some in Congress 
these days are now the greatest obstacle to future job creation in our 
country.
  America's economic confidence is measured daily by polling by Gallup. 
It is currently at minus 22. It matches the low for the year. It is 
worth pointing out that the other low for the year happened right 
before sequestration took effect in March--another problem, another 
self-inflicted wound caused by Congress.
  The implementation of sequester cuts, which is what happened when 
Congress proved itself unable to make the tough decisions that Congress 
was sent here to make, has led to job losses and furloughs, so many 
families don't have as much to make ends meet.
  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported we could lose up 
to 1.6 million jobs next year if these across-the-board cuts continue. 
Further, a number of economists have concluded that Congress 
significantly reduced this country's economic growth because we failed 
to replace the cuts with something smarter. Economic growth is a fancy 
term for people going to work and people who have jobs.
  The American people are losing confidence in their economy because of 
Congress. Here we are 6 months later, 4 days into a government 
shutdown, 13 days away from defaulting on our debt. History tells us 
government shutdowns are terrible for the economy and terrible for 
jobs.
  If we look at the last time the Federal Government shut down in 1995 
and

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1996 for 27 days, Congress put hundreds of thousands of people out of 
work, with $1.4 billion in damages, and consumer confidence took a 
double-digit dip. Back then our country's economy was in a stronger 
place than it is today and it recovered a little bit more quickly. This 
government shutdown is damaging our economy at a time where it is very 
fragile.
  However, this government shutdown has damaged our economy, but a 
default on our bills as we look forward would be absolutely 
devastating. What happens if we fail to raise the debt limit and if we 
stop paying our bills? That is what the debt limit is. It is our 
obligation to pay our bills.
  While it is completely unprecedented, well-respected economists warn 
it could send us right back into a tailspin. We are still recovering 
from the last recession. At a time when Hoosiers are trying to get back 
to work and take care of our families, Congress's inability to work 
together is making it so much more difficult. Congress is not helping 
and is actually hindering job creation and economic growth.
  This is no way to run a country. I stand ready to work with anyone in 
a commonsense way out of this train wreck. We must find a way to stop 
hurting the economy and to actually help the people who have made this 
country such a great place.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. As did my colleague from Indiana, Senator Donnelly, I also 
wish to take a moment before I deliver my remarks here to thank the 
Capitol Police, all of law enforcement, and first responders who have 
put themselves on the line to protect others.
  I know I speak for every Republican, every Democrat, and all of our 
staffs that we deeply appreciate their work and their sacrifice. These 
brave men and women are here every day whether they are paid or not. We 
appreciate that.
  If there is one thing we are united on, and I wish there were more, 
it is our respect for those who serve to protect, those serving us here 
at home as well as those serving us in harm's way abroad. We owe them 
our support and we owe them our thanks.
  I am hearing from a number of Hoosiers, as my colleague from Indiana 
has, that they are tired of political gamesmanship, they are tired of 
paying taxes to a government that isn't listening or delivering for 
them, and now we are in a situation where they are tired of our 
careening toward these cliffs and shutdown. But when the Republican-
controlled House sent over legislation to the Senate, calling for House 
and Senate leaders to conference together, to sit down in a room, talk 
through this problem and come to a solution, this good-faith effort was 
rejected out of hand by the Senate majority leader, Senator Reid of 
Nevada.
  We wanted to sit down and debate this issue. Once again, yet another 
good-faith effort sent over by Republicans to help fund the essential 
functions of this government was dead on arrival in the Senate. The 
Senate majority leader, parroting the words of the President, said: We 
will not negotiate. This was refusing to allow Republicans and 
Democrats to try to find a way forward to resolve this issue and get 
our government functioning.
  In the past when these things happened, Presidents, realizing that 
they were elected to lead--we are elected to serve here, we are elected 
to serve the President, we are elected to serve the people we 
represent, but the President is elected to serve this country. When the 
President in the past has come up in a stalemate situation, there has 
been a reach out to the other side whenever we have a divided 
government.
  After 2008, when the Democrats won control of the House, the Senate, 
and the executive branch, they had total control. They pushed through a 
number of measures without any single Republican or opposition support. 
Those programs now we are dealing with, and ObamaCare is the primary 
one that has brought us to this particular point. The lesson learned 
here is when one party has total control without support from the 
opposition party, we end up with legislation that is dysfunctional, 
that doesn't work, that reflects the ideology of one party and doesn't 
have any balance to it. We are now in a position where we have a 
divided government. What we would like is to have some say on how this 
goes forward, to point out those things of this bill that are not 
working, to point out the disaster this is turning out to be, the 
dysfunction of this particular legislation.
  The point I am trying to make here is whatever the issue, whenever we 
come to a stalemate, historically throughout the history of this 
country it is the Commander in Chief, the President, who has stepped 
forward and taken the initiative and said: We need to work together to 
solve this. We can't impose our will on the body that the American 
people has divided, giving control of one House to one party and 
control of another House to another party.
  Ronald Reagan reached out to Tip O'Neill, and some very significant 
measures, stalemates, were resolved because the President reached out 
and was willing to negotiate.
  The Democratic President, Bill Clinton, reached out to a then-
Republican Speaker of the House in the 1990s, and we addressed a major 
issue with welfare reform, much-needed welfare reform. It couldn't have 
happened without the President reaching out.
  I could give other examples, but we are in another stalemate 
situation. Yet what do we hear? No matter what Republicans send over, 
no matter what the offer is, if the offer is to let us sit down and 
conference this, the reaction from the Senate majority leader is: We 
refuse to negotiate. The reaction from the White House and this 
President over and over and over again is: I will not negotiate.
  Even though the American public sent you control of one House of 
Congress, even though the Constitution establishes the role of the 
Congress vis-a-vis the President, and calls for an agreement between 
the two before we can move forward, this President, for whatever 
motive, says: I will not negotiate.
  We can do something right now to help Americans. We can come together 
to help fund important programs and departments that should not have 
been jeopardized because of this impasse. We can at least do that. If 
we can't get the President to negotiate, can we not at least take some 
steps forward for those essential functions of government?
  Republicans have sent over nine such propositions and proposals. Each 
one of them has been rejected, dead on arrival, not even allowed to 
debate, and procedurally stopped by the majority leader.
  Let me suggest four that are waiting in the wings and surely, for 
reasons of health and safety of Americans, surely we can agree to 
support these four and perhaps more. Some others have been suggested. 
Surely we have to conclude that this is an essential function. How it 
was that they were declared nonessential is beyond me.
  Let me mention the four: Honoring our veterans and the commitments 
that we have made to them, providing for our national security, and 
protecting Americans' health.
  I spoke earlier this week on the Honoring Our Promise to America's 
Veterans Act, a bill providing funding for disability payments, the GI 
bill education training, and VA home loans under the same conditions 
that were in place last year. The House passed this, but the Senate 
majority leader has blocked it here.
  The House also passed the Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act. This bill 
provides funding for the pay and allowances of military personnel in 
the Reserve component and National Guard component who are scheduled to 
report for duty as early as this weekend. Denying support for those who 
wear the uniform and stand ready and are engaged when called on, and 
have been trained to do so, is a great disservice to the men and women 
who have dedicated so much and put themselves at great risk to wear the 
uniform of the United States.
  Secondly, funding the Department of Homeland Security. There are a 
number of ways our homeland security is impacted under the shutdown. 
One of the impacts on FEMA--the Federal

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Emergency Management Agency--is the need to be funded so they are 
prepared to respond to natural disasters. We are only a breaking-news 
headline away from another natural disaster or from some other need for 
FEMA to engage. Yet their employees are furloughed and not in place to 
be ready to respond.
  We have a tropical storm in the gulf right now that may turn into 
something dangerous. Our emergency response efforts to provide for our 
homeland support is inadequately funded. Can we at least do that?
  How about funding for our intelligence community? The House will send 
us Preserving Our Intelligence Capabilities Act, which will provide 
immediate funding for personnel compensation and contracts for those 
individuals who have been determined by the Director of National 
Intelligence as necessary to support critical intelligence activities 
and counterterrorism efforts.
  Under the current shutdown, 70 percent of our civilian employees in 
our intelligence community have been sent home on furlough. Director of 
National Intelligence Clapper said this lapse in funding our 
intelligence agency is a ``dreamland'' for our foreign intelligence 
adversaries.
  Can we not at least, if we have a delay in resolving our issues 
here--and we have that delay, as I said, because the Senate majority 
leader has not allowed us to sit down and work-- Madam President, I ask 
unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for an additional 3 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COATS. I thank the Chair.
  Can we not at least fund those agencies that are looking to protect 
us from terrorist acts, that are in place to keep the American people 
safe? How can we reject that?
  Finally, let me mention a fourth--and there are others, but let me 
mention this one. Fund Food and Drug Safety Programs, safety programs 
for those who are in need of approvals for new drugs and new devices 
and who are experiencing significant delays because the Federal 
employees at FDA who review these functions cannot report to work.
  Madam President, frankly, I am perplexed why the majority leader 
continues to oppose even consideration and debate for individual 
funding bills when they just agreed a couple of days ago to funding for 
our troops, and I applaud that and support that. But if we did that 
because of the essential nature of their function, shouldn't we also 
include these other items? Shouldn't we agree we need to fulfill our 
commitments to guard and reserve and our intelligence community at this 
critical time?
  The House has already sent over nine proposals to the Senate for 
consideration--nine--and nine times the Senate has had the opportunity 
to pass legislation to reopen our government and fund essential 
programs, but the Senate majority leader chose not to do so and the 
President refuses to even engage.
  A government shutdown is a pox on all our houses. We need to do what 
the people of this great country elected us to do, and that is to work 
to find a solution to this government shutdown. How can we do that if 
the Democratic chair at the negotiating table is empty? What we are 
looking at here is a Clint Eastwood moment. We are looking at an empty 
chair. Mr. President, where are you?
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. I want to thank the Senator from Indiana for invoking the 
name of one of my favorite actors and directors. I would say to my 
friend, I didn't think our friend Clint Eastwood's appearance at the 
Republican National Convention was one of his finest moments, but it is 
what it is. It is nice to be with my colleague and to follow him on the 
floor.
  Madam President, if it were left up to the Senator from Indiana and 
this Senator, as well as our colleagues here from North Dakota and 
Rhode Island, I think we could probably work out a pretty good budget 
deal in a fairly short period of time that raises some revenues through 
tax reform to reduce the deficit, reforms to the entitlement programs 
to save money and save the programs for the long haul, and to make sure 
we don't savage old people and poor people. And while we are doing 
that, probably we can change the culture of the Federal Government a 
little so that we focus even more--not on a culture of spendthrift but 
on a culture of thrift.
  Those are the things we need to do. And I am always happy to be with 
him and happy to follow him. It is so nice to be with Senator Coats 
today.
  Following up on what Senator Coats has been saying, it reminds me of 
a phone conversation I had with a Delawarean today. She asked me: Why 
don't we all just agree to what the Republicans are proposing and adopt 
a couple of bills or amendments to fund some pieces of the government 
but not many? And I said: Let's go back a little in time.
  What I sought to do in that conversation was to explain, in pretty 
simple, straightforward terms, how the budget process works here--how 
the budget process works here--and where it has gone awry. We have had 
a budget law since about 1974. The expectation of the Budget Act is 
that the President, usually in January or February of every year, will 
give a budget address. This is what the President and his or her 
administration thinks we ought to do in terms of revenues, in terms of 
spending--what our priorities should be.
  The expectation in the law is also that this body, the Senate, and 
the House down the hall from here, will agree on a budget resolution 
sometime by, say late April of the year, for a budget starting October 
1 of that same year. For a number of years--about 4 years--we didn't do 
our job in terms of developing a budget resolution. It was difficult in 
a divided Congress to do that. So for several years we didn't. 
Republicans criticized us harshly for not having passed a budget. What 
they were talking about was a budget resolution.
  There is a difference between a budget and a budget resolution. In my 
home State of Delaware, we have three budgets: An operating budget for 
the State of Delaware, a capital budget for the State of Delaware, and 
something called grant and aid, which is something the legislature 
cares a lot about. It is only a couple of percentage points of all our 
revenue. But there are actually three budgets. Here we have one, and it 
is a unified budget with capital and operating expenses thrown in 
together. But there is no real direct corollary between what we do here 
and what we do in most of our States.
  Most States have an operating and a capital budget. Here we have a 
budget resolution. The budget resolution is not a nitty-gritty line-
item budget. What it does is to set a framework for what is to follow--
the appropriations bills, roughly a dozen of them--and what we do on 
the revenue side through the work of the Finance Committee here and the 
Ways and Means Committee in the House.
  The budget resolution says: This is roughly how much we are going to 
spend in these general areas, and this is roughly how much revenue we 
are going to raise from these general sources. That is a budget 
resolution. It is, if you will, a framework. I call it the skeleton. It 
is like a skeleton. Later on we have to come along and put the meat on 
the bones.
  The budget resolution is supposed to be adopted here by the end of 
April. Usually the Senate will adopt one version, our version, and the 
House will adopt another version. We did that this year, by the end of 
April, as I recall, and they were different. In our budget resolution 
we did deficit reduction. We didn't balance the budget over the next 
several years, but we continued to reduce the deficit. Remember, 4 
years ago, the deficit peaked out at $1.4 trillion--$1.4 trillion. This 
last year that was just concluded we cut it by more than half, as I 
understand, and we expect it will be brought down again further this 
year. Should we do better? Do we need to do better? Sure we do.
  The budget resolution we passed here took a 50-50 approach; half the 
deficit

[[Page 15147]]

reduction for the next 10 years will be on the spending side and half 
will be on the revenue side. The budget resolution adopted by the House 
of Representatives, as I recall, did nothing on the revenue side, 
nothing on the Defense side, as I recall, and basically took the 
savings out of, for the most part, domestic discretionary spending. If 
we set aside entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid--set aside Defense, and set aside interest payments, the whole 
rest of the budget--everything from agriculture to transportation, 
everything else--that is where they took the savings. And they reduced 
that part of the budget from about 15 percent of all Federal spending 
down to something close to 5 percent. That is not my vision of what 
government should be about.
  Anyway, we came to the end of April, and the Senate and House passed 
different budget resolutions, and there was an effort here to go to 
conference--to create a conference committee and for us to send 
conferees. For people who might be watching and asking: What is he 
talking about, a conference committee is like a compromise committee--
some Members of the House, some Members of the Senate, Democrats and 
Republicans, go to this committee we create for just a short period of 
time to hammer out a compromise. In order to do that, somebody has to 
come to the floor--usually the leader comes to the floor--to ask 
unanimous consent that the Senate appoint conferees, Democrats and 
Republicans, to help create this conference committee and work out a 
compromise.
  That request was rejected. It was objected to. It has been objected 
to again and again and again, whether the person making the unanimous 
consent to go to conference to work out this budget compromise--it has 
been made by Democrats or Republicans, at least one Republican. Senator 
Murray has made the request--she chairs the Budget Committee--close to 
20 times, and John McCain, a Republican, and Presidential candidate a 
couple years ago, long-time friend and colleague, has made the request 
close to 10 times. He wants to go to conference. He wants to solve the 
problems. So do I, and I think most of us do.
  The ways to do it are those things I talked about--entitlement 
reforms that save these programs, that save some money but don't savage 
old people or poor people; tax reform that generates, among other 
things, some revenues that can be used for deficit reduction; and then 
to focus on everything we do. How do we get a better result for less 
money in everything we do?
  Long story short, here we are. It is not the first of May, it is not 
the first of June, not the first of July, and not the first of August 
or September. It is the first part of October, and we have yet to be 
able to get the unanimous consent to form that conference committee to 
work out a compromise on the budget. That is where we have fallen 
short. That is where we have fallen short.
  We hear a lot about obstruction: The majority leader or the President 
won't let us work with the Republicans on these piecemeal approaches. 
For everybody here--and I love Dan Coats--but for everybody here in the 
Senate, we could all come up with our list of four. We could come up 
with a list of 14 priorities. If you multiply that by 100, that would 
be 1,400 priorities that ought to be in all this piece work, these 
piecemeal changes we are going to make to the spending for the next 
couple of weeks or next couple of months.
  Why don't we just do this. Why don't we agree to what the Speaker of 
the House agreed to, and that is a spending level for a short period of 
time--a continuing resolution, a spending plan, for a short period of 
time--not for the whole year. In this case, we have been talking about 
a continuing resolution, a short-term spending bill, that runs about 45 
days, until maybe the middle of November.
  The level of that spending, we can argue about that. But what we 
ended up doing is, our leader, Harry Reid, talking to John Boehner, 
Speaker of the House--and he has a tough job. None of these jobs are 
easy, but they have really tough jobs. But our leader said to the 
Speaker: What would be a level of spending for those 45 days or 60 days 
for the short-term spending bill? What level of spending works for you? 
My understanding is the Speaker vetted that with his folks over there 
and they came back and said: How about using the level of spending we 
are at for the last fiscal year, for 2013, and to fund for those 45 or 
60 days whatever is covered by the continuing resolution, funded at 
that level for that period of time?
  That is not our level. The Democratic level, to be honest, is not 
$986 billion, which is last year's level for discretionary spending. We 
were more interested in something like, I would say not $986 billion 
but about $1.05 trillion, something like that. Something like that, in 
trillion dollars.
  So about another $70 billion--that was our number. The House had 
their number. We agreed to the House number. We said: OK, we agree on 
the number. Now let's figure out how long we are going to fund the 
government at the same level as last year.
  Then the ship ran aground.
  Our friends over in the House said: That is not enough. We also want 
to defund Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.
  This is not like a proposed bill, this is a law. I was here in the 
Finance Committee when we debated it, amended it, argued it, reported 
it out, and here when we voted on it and then the President signed it. 
It is law. The President ran for reelection on this and was reelected. 
We pretend it was a landslide reelection. The electoral vote was fairly 
big, but it was a reasonably close election. But he won, and he won 
fair and square. When you look at the Electoral College, he won by 
quite a bit.
  It has been litigated in the courts. The Supreme Court looked at the 
one area that some people think is unconstitutional; that is, the idea 
of having a so-called individual mandate. They said it is 
constitutional. Where did we get the idea? We got it from 
Massachusetts. And who was the Governor that signed the Massachusetts 
law into effect? The Republican Presidential nominee, who then turned 
around and ran away from his own idea in the Presidential election last 
year. I think there is some irony to that.
  Then, on October 1, this week, what happened? I think some good news 
happened, and the good news is there are 40 million people in our 
country who didn't have health care who had a chance to sign up for 
something new and different. It is not socialism, it is not communism, 
it is not government-run health care. It is a Republican idea called 
the exchange, the health marketplace. And my understanding is that when 
HillaryCare was discarded in the early part the Clinton administration, 
the Republican counterproposal to HillaryCare was something like a 
large purchasing pool, which in the health care exchange we call the 
marketplace today.
  On October 1, all over this country 40 million people who didn't have 
health care coverage had a chance to start signing up for health care 
in a large purchasing pool in their State, with a variety of options, 
health insurance companies competing with each other, driving down 
costs--in my State, tens of thousands of people; States like Wisconsin, 
probably hundreds of thousands of people; other States like North 
Dakota, tens of thousands of people; but States like New York and 
California, millions of people who don't have health care coverage have 
a chance to sign up there and take advantage of driving down the 
price--competition among insurers--and also taking advantage of 
economies of scale, driving down administrative costs as a percentage 
of premiums.
  To buy health insurance in Delaware for families or maybe small 
businesses with five employees--we would pay a whole lot more money 
than folks are going to pay on these exchanges, these large purchasing 
pools. For one thing, the administrative costs are so high when you buy 
for yourself or a small business; however, when you are buying health 
insurance for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of 
people, administrative costs

[[Page 15148]]

are much lower. Competitive forces bring down the prices as well.
  Our friends in the other party want to pull the plug on the efforts 
of 40 million people to find health care coverage for themselves. I 
think that is wrong. It is the law of the land. It is a done deal. It 
has been litigated. It is going to be with us. And I think some of our 
Republican friends are not afraid that it is not going to work; I think 
maybe they are concerned that it is going to work and it is going to 
actually meet the needs of people.
  Abraham Lincoln, when talking about the role of government, would 
say: The role of government is to do for people what they cannot do for 
themselves.
  The chamber of commerce in Sussex County in southern Delaware--a 
rural area--tried to set up a purchasing pool and couldn't do it. They 
tried it 10 years ago.
  Another guy, David Osborne, in the book ``Reinventing Government,'' 
described the role of government and said the role of government is to 
steer the boat, not row the boat. And the exchanges are really that. 
The idea is to create large purchasing pools, a partnership between the 
State and the Federal Government in many States, Delaware and others, 
but to then let the private sector do its job. These are great examples 
of government steering the boat and the private sector and other 
providers rowing the boat.
  I would like to close with this: People say we ought to change 
ObamaCare, we ought to change the Affordable Care Act, make significant 
changes to it. I agree. And the President already made one big change 1 
month or so ago when he announced that the employer mandate was going 
to be delayed for a whole year to give us a chance to stand up the 
exchanges, make sure they are working, and then to revisit this issue 
of the employer mandate. The coverage, if you have more than 50 
employees--a year from now it will be more than 100 employees they have 
to cover, I think, but at least more than 50.
  Some people say we have to change it right now. I want to go back in 
time 6, 8 years. We debated on this floor the issue of prescription 
drugs. Should we have a prescription drug program for Medicare? Most 
people said we should have had it when we created Medicare in 1965. If 
we could have done as much then with pharmaceuticals as we can do now, 
it would have been a no-brainer. Prescription drug coverage would have 
been part of Medicare since its inception. But it wasn't until about 
2005 that we actually got to a place where we had some agreement that 
this is what we ought to do. Ted Kennedy and the Democrats had one idea 
how to do it, and some of our Republican friends--certainly President 
Bush--had another one. We ended up with sort of a hybrid--a little more 
like President George W. Bush's idea--and a lot of our Democrats 
objected. They didn't say: We are going to shut down the government 
because we didn't get our way or because we didn't get our specific 
prescription drug program. They said: Why don't we figure out how to 
make it better?
  Almost everybody has heard of the doughnut hole with respect to the 
Medicare prescription drug program. The way the original program worked 
is the first $2,000 of pharmaceuticals for a person in Medicare Part 
D--Medicare paid about 75 percent of the cost. If they used over $6,000 
of prescription medicine a year, Medicare paid about 95 percent of the 
cost, everything over $6,000. But roughly between $3,000 and $6,000--
when the program was introduced and for its first half dozen or so 
years, if you were between $3,000 and $6,000 roughly in prescription 
medicine purchases, you got nothing from Medicare. It was all on you.
  When we did the Affordable Care Act, as our friends from Rhode Island 
and North Dakota know, we started filling the doughnut hole. Now, if 
you happen to be in that gap between $3,000 and $6,000, Medicare pays 
over half and will eventually pay 75 percent. That is the way we took a 
good program--Medicare Part D--and we made it better, and we can do 
that with the Affordable Care Act, and we will.
  For our Republican friends, our friend Winston Churchill once had a 
great quote. He used to say: You can always count on Americans to do 
the right thing in the end, after they have tried everything else.
  This is a tough time. I feel especially bad for those Federal 
employees across the country who have been furloughed. We are going to 
bring you back, I hope, this month. My hope and belief is that we will 
bring you back and make sure you are made financially whole.
  I say to my Republican colleagues, the next time, whether it is John 
McCain or Patty Murray or somebody else who asks unanimous consent to 
go to conference and work out a real budget agreement, don't object. 
Let's accept that and get on with the work that lies ahead.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Madam President, yesterday was a scary day on Capitol 
Hill. I was sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair and saw the bells 
ring, saw all the Capitol Police hustle our great pages in to protect 
them. Senator McCain was speaking, and like the veteran he is he 
continued to make his impassioned plea for help for the Syrian 
opposition as things swirled around. For members of our staff and 
Members of the Senate and the House and all the tourists and the 
visitors, I think the only thing that stood at that moment between them 
and potential harm was the Capitol Police and the Secret Service. I was 
struck by that.
  As a former attorney general who actually ran a law enforcement 
agency, I have a lot of great relationships with law enforcement 
people. In fact, I lost two officers in the line of duty during my 
tenure as attorney general, and I know the sacrifices, I know the fears 
of the families, and I know that every day, regardless of what is going 
on, some average, ordinary beautiful day can turn into a catastrophe 
where an officer loses their life.
  As we were standing there, I was visiting with one of the officers 
who was protecting the pages, and she told me a story. She told me a 
story about a uniformed Capitol Police officer who told her that 
morning that he has a stay-at-home wife and she is raising their 
children, and he has $115 in his checking account and doesn't know how 
he is going to get through this time period to the next paycheck. Even 
though they are here and some of them are working overtime, they are 
here without a paycheck and potentially might not receive a paycheck.
  So today we wear these buttons that say ``thank you.'' And I think 
about the hypocrisy of that. I think about the hypocrisy of buttons and 
galas and ribbons and all, and I want to say it is time for the 
Congress to not just pass out buttons that say ``thank you'' but pass 
out paychecks. That matters more. That is a real thank-you. That is 
real recognition of the value of those services.
  So it was with great outrage that I left this body last night as we 
were working through the challenges, and I realized the great humor of 
the Capitol Police. I was leaving the building and visiting with my 
guys at the door. He was giving me a hard time, and I said: I want to 
thank you for being here every day. I want to thank you for your 
sacrifice. I want to thank you for the trauma your family goes through. 
And he said: Just think how good I would be if you actually paid me.
  So I wish to say to all of my friends in the Capitol Police, who have 
been really truly friends--on some days I feel as if the only friendly 
face I see--that we care deeply. But it is not enough to wear a button. 
We have to start solving the problem of this impasse. We have to start 
recognizing that all of our people, all of our employees in the Federal 
Government--we have heard all day here this laundry list of let's do 
this and let's do this. I think we are up to 9, 10, and they are 
building, they are growing each one of these lists. There should be 
some point when we get to the tipping point where we realize that all 
of the functions are important. Everybody who is out there working is 
important, is essential, and the best way forward is to fund 
government.
  I want to build on what Senator Carper has been talking about because 
I

[[Page 15149]]

think it is so important. I probably was sitting in the chair the first 
time this happened. As most of you know, I am new to the Senate and new 
to these procedures. And Senator Murray, chair of the Budget Committee, 
came out and she asked to appoint a budget conference committee. I know 
this process fairly well. You get the big targets, and then they get 
passed down to the appropriators, who then build the budget within 
those guidelines. And the Senator from Texas stood and objected. I 
thought, why would you object to the appointment of a conference 
committee with the House and with Representative Ryan, who has been a 
staunch conservative and a staunch proponent of targets that I would 
think the Senator from Texas agreed to? There was this long back-and-
forth, and then Senator Murray sat down and that was the end of it. I 
was perplexed. I thought, well, when do we get to vote on this 
conference committee? When do we get to kind of tell her it is OK 
because there are a whole lot of people in this place who agree that we 
should go to conference--only to find out there is something called 
unanimous consent.
  The same people who have brought us to the brink of triggering a 
result of a slowdown in our economy with this behavior also have 
stopped the compromise. Now, adding to the hypocrisy of the day, we 
have the same claim for ``let's compromise.'' The easy compromise here 
is when Senator Murray comes to the floor and asks for a conference 
committee, we all agree to start doing it, we all agree to start doing 
our job.
  There has been a lot of attention on the so-called tea party shutdown 
and the tea party faction and calling them out and saying: You are a 
minority. But I would like to take a different tactic this afternoon, 
and I want to challenge the good people in the House Republican caucus 
who have already recognized that the best thing to do would be to pass 
a clean CR. I want to say I know what it is like to take a tough vote 
that your party doesn't agree with. I know what it is like to feel as 
though you have let people down who are part of a group that is helping 
and moving things along and that represents, kind of, your team to some 
degree. I know what that is like. I have been there and I know it 
doesn't feel good. But I know at the end of the day doing the right 
thing for what you believe your State believes in is a better feeling.
  I am suggesting maybe the minority, the minority of the majority that 
has an opportunity to step forward and take on this challenge and do 
the right thing, are those folks who know this is wrong, those folks 
who know over there that we could do better, that we have an 
opportunity to end this nonsense and move forward.
  There is a procedure for doing this, as I understand it. I want to 
speak to those folks who I think are good-hearted, who understand the 
impact on families, on children, on our Native Americans. I could tell 
you horror stories right now, where we are looking at a snowstorm in 
North Dakota and many of our native families rely on fuel assistance. 
The people who do that are not on the job. How are they going to heat 
their houses in the middle of this snowstorm? This is life and death. I 
do not see a special provision coming across for those folks.
  That is the problem when you piecemeal this. I think there are good 
people in the House Republican caucus who know that. If there is a way 
that they can in fact step forward, there will not be a lot of floor 
glory in their caucus. Trust me, I know. There won't be a lot of pats 
on the back and it might be pretty chilly for a long time. But you will 
have your conscience clear knowing that you did the right thing.
  I am hopeful we can get good people to step forward, to stand up to 
behavior that can only be described in some ways--it has been talked 
about as hostage-taking here. It is really bullying behavior when the 
small minority does this.
  Let's step forward. Let's do the right thing. I challenge you to do 
the right thing on behalf of the Native Americans, on behalf of my 
sheriff from Fargo, who was sent home from Quantico, the premier 
training facility. He waited years and years to be in the queue to get 
that training and now has been sent home. On behalf of law enforcement, 
on behalf of the Capitol Police, where we, yes, honor them today by 
wearing these buttons, let's honor them more by passing out paychecks.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I join my former attorney general 
colleague, Senator Heitkamp, in expressing all of our appreciation for 
what the Capitol Police did. We all know when that event transpired, 
our job was to go and hunker down, stay away from windows where we 
might be a target, and keep out of the way and not add to the 
difficulty or confusion. They had a much tougher job. Their job was to 
go to the danger and keep the United States Capitol safe. They did 
their duty and they did it well.
  It is now incumbent upon us to do our duty and that is to get rid of 
the tea party shutdown. We are now in tea party shutdown day 4. I have 
been watching this debate as it transpired on the floor and I have been 
participating a little bit in it. I have heard some interesting 
comments that have been made out here.
  The first one is the suggestion that this is not a tea party 
shutdown. They say it is not a tea party shutdown, but the tea party 
warned of it, the tea party wanted it, the tea party is cheering it, 
and the tea party says they are profiting from it, that it is a big 
success.
  When did the tea party warn of it? One example is when Lynn 
Westmoreland, the Republican from Georgia, long before this all began, 
told the Faith and Freedom Coalition:

       This is what we are going to do. If the Government shuts 
     down we want you with us.

  The tea party wanted it.
  Joe Walsh, Republican of Illinois:

       Most people in my district say shut it down.

  Representative Jack Kingston told reporters that his Georgia 
constituents would rather have a shutdown than ObamaCare.
  Representative Tim Huelskamp said:

       If you say government is going to shut down my constituents 
     say, OK, which part can we shut down?

  The tea party not only warned of it and wanted it, but they are 
cheering it.
  Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said this:

       We are very excited. It's exactly what we wanted, and we 
     got it.

  She pointed out in another quote:

       This is about the happiest I have seen members in a long 
     time.

  How happy are the tea partyers about the tea party shutdown? Here is 
what Republican Representative Devin Nunes said: ``They are all giddy 
about it.''
  The dictionary definitions of ``giddy'' say, ``feeling or showing 
great happiness and joy. Joyfully elated, euphoric.'' ``Giddy'' also 
means ``lightheartedly, silly'' or ``dizzy'' and ``disoriented,'' but 
that is another story.
  Elated, giddy, exactly what we wanted--now they say they are 
profiting from it. Here is GOP cheerleader John Tamny, in Forbes 
magazine. I am quoting.

       Republican politicians and members of the Party should 
     cheer. . . . The Republican Party . . . decision to allow a 
     shutdown of the federal government--

  and get this--

     and to ideally allow it to remain shut through the 2014 
     elections . . . is . . . good politics.

  I will say that again:

       Republican politicians and members of the Party should 
     cheer. . . . The Republican Party . . . decision to allow a 
     shutdown of the federal government and to ideally allow it to 
     remain shut through the 2014 elections . . . is . . . good 
     politics.

  Echoing that sentiment we had our colleague Senator Rand Paul the 
other day say, ``We're going to win this, I think.''
  So the tea party warned of the tea party shutdown, the tea party 
wanted the tea party shutdown, the tea party is cheering the tea party 
shutdown. They are so happy that they are giddy.

[[Page 15150]]

And they are claiming that their tea party shutdown is a big success. 
It is a little late now to say, well, it is really not our tea party 
shutdown.
  I have also heard colleagues come to the floor and say nothing they 
are doing is extremist. It is not extremist to shut down the government 
and make the demands they are making. One dictionary definition for 
extremist is ``one who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the 
norm, especially in politics.''
  I would say that shutting down the U.S. Government is beyond the 
norm, even in politics. I would say refusing to ever allow a vote on a 
Senate-passed bill under the constitutional procedures that prevail 
between our Houses is beyond the norm. And I would say that 
deliberately putting hundreds of thousands of people who serve our 
country out of work is beyond the norm.
  The norm would be for them to vote on our Senate bill over in the 
House. Over and over we in the Senate have voted on their House 
measures. We voted to strip out the extraneous measure and send back 
the continuing resolution. We voted to table. We followed the 
Constitution, we have done our duty, and we have voted. They in the 
House may not like that they do not win the Senate vote, but we did our 
duty in the Senate and have repeatedly voted on House measures.
  Over in the House they have not yet once voted on the Senate measure. 
It is sitting on the Speaker's desk without ever a single vote. If the 
Speaker called up the Senate measure and allowed a vote over there in 
the House, it would pass and the tea party shutdown would be over. But, 
remember, who wants this shutdown in order to use it for bargaining 
leverage? The giddy folks, the folks who are so happy they have caused 
this, the folks who think this is good politics.
  I think it is safe to say they are extremists, both by the dictionary 
definition and in their disregard of our traditional back and forth, 
one House voting on the other House's measure.
  Last, and this one is particularly rich, they say we won't negotiate. 
Let's remember that this all began with a deal negotiated between the 
Speaker and the majority leader that we pass a clean continuing 
resolution funding the government. What did the Speaker get out of that 
deal? We agreed to fund the government at the Speaker's level. He 
actually won that negotiation. That was what was negotiated. But the 
Speaker did not honor the deal.
  As I say, it is rich that we negotiate, we give the Speaker the 
funding level he wants, then he breaks the deal and now claims we won't 
negotiate.
  One of my colleagues came to the floor a little while ago and he 
called to mind the radio commentator Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey used to 
have his catchphrase in his radio broadcast, ``and now for the rest of 
the story.'' And he talked about the rest of the story. The President 
has made his position very clear. It is: We will not negotiate while 
you are holding hostages. Open the government and we will negotiate 
about everything and anything. But we will not negotiate while you are 
holding hostages.
  All the Republicans report in this Chamber is the first part: We will 
not negotiate. It is not a question of the rest of the story, how about 
the rest of the sentence? We will not negotiate while you are holding 
hostages. Remember that 19 times we have tried to appoint conferees to 
negotiate a budget between the Senate and the House and every time, the 
tea party extremists have stopped us. Let's remember that they do not 
want to negotiate. They want to negotiate with hostages. That is a very 
different thing. They want to negotiate with hostages, hundreds of 
thousands of people who serve our country whom they are using as 
hostages and will not let go back to work and earn their living. That 
is not just negotiation. There is something more than just negotiation 
going on when it involves hostages or other threats.
  Every mom whose 4-year-old is having a tantrum over not getting what 
they want knows that is not just negotiation. Every 12-year-old picked 
on by the school bully in the school playground knows that is not just 
negotiation. And every businessman who is asked to pay protection money 
knows that is not just negotiation. There is something else going on. 
Ordinary Americans get the difference between negotiating in good 
faith, the way we have to if we had appointed conferees and went to 
have an actual conference between the House and the Senate about our 
budget, the way the rules in the Constitution propose, and negotiating 
with a threat or negotiating while holding hostages.
  We are not going to negotiate while you are holding hostages. There 
are two parts to that sentence.
  May I have 1 minute to conclude? I see Senator Portman has arrived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The majority leader said publicly he will negotiate on anything and 
everything as soon as the hostages are released and the tea party 
shutdown has ended. To now blame the majority leader for this tea party 
shutdown reminds me of when President Lincoln was put in such a 
position. When President Lincoln was accused of the very thing he was 
trying to prevent, he said:

       That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and 
     mutters through his teeth: ``Stand and deliver, or I shall 
     kill you, and then you will be a murderer!''

  That was Abraham Lincoln.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam Chair, we find ourselves here in Washington with 
the government shutdown in place and a debt limit approaching, and I 
read this morning in the newspaper that a senior White House official 
has said with regard to the shutdown, ``We are winning . . . It doesn't 
really matter to us'' how long it lasts.
  That is not the right attitude. Today I call upon the White House to 
stop the political posturing, to come to the table so we can find 
common ground and end this government shutdown and negotiate something 
sensible on the debt limit. This notion that a senior White House 
official would say, ``We are winning . . . It doesn't really matter to 
us'' how long it lasts, shows that it is politics, not substance that 
matters.
  It may not matter to the White House how long it lasts, by the way, 
but it does matter to the American people because they expect us to 
fulfill our constitutional duties, to get our work done, and not to 
take America to the brink. They expect us to do the job that we were 
sent here to do.
  It matters, by the way, to a lot of Americans because they are being 
affected by it. There are 8,700 civilian employees at Wright-Patterson 
Air Force Base outside of Dayton, OH, who are being affected. It 
matters to the roughly 1,800 Ohio National Guardsmen across the State 
of Ohio who have been furloughed.
  We can stand here and point fingers at each other as to how we got 
here. The truth is that how we got here is we didn't do our work. The 
fact that we have a continuing resolution at all, which is a 
continuation of funding from last fiscal year, is a mark of failure. It 
is a mark of failure because it means that the Congress didn't do the 
appropriations bills that it was supposed to do. There are 12 of them, 
and the idea is that Congress sits down and has hearings about the 
departments and agencies to provide proper oversight to the Federal 
Government, and then they put together appropriations bills in 12 
different areas. That hasn't happened. Congress did not pass these 
appropriations bills in an orderly way. If they did, there would not be 
a continuing resolution.
  We can talk about the fact that over the last 4 years, under the 
leadership of the majority in the Senate, we have passed exactly 1 
appropriations bill out of 48, on time--1 out of 48. That was the 
military construction bill. I think it was in about 2011. That should 
be a relatively easy one to pass.
  The House has done better. They have passed more appropriations 
bills, and they passed a budget consistently every year. This year--in 
the fourth year after 3 years of no budget--the Senate did pass a 
budget, and I applaud the Senate for that. I do support going to 
conference with those budgets, but

[[Page 15151]]

the fact is that Congress has not done its work, and that is why we are 
here. Only 1 appropriations bill out of 48 in the last 4 years has 
passed this Senate on time--one.
  There is another way to get around this, and we can talk about that. 
There is legislation called the end government shutdown bill, which 
simply continues funding from year to year. If we get to September 30, 
and any appropriations bill is not done, it says we will have the same 
level of funding as the previous year, except after 120 days there is a 
1 percent reduction in funding, and after another 90 days, there is 
another 1 percent reduction in funding, and so on. The reason is to 
encourage the appropriators to meet and get their work done, so we put 
a little inducement in there.
  That legislation is bipartisan. We voted on that legislation in the 
Chamber earlier this year. It was supported by 46 of the 100 members. 
It was supported by every Republican except for two, and it was 
supported by three Democrats. It is my legislation, and we tried to 
bring this up as an amendment last week on the continuing resolution. 
It would have made all the sense in the world. Instead of us having 
this discussion we are having now in the context of a government 
shutdown, if we had passed the end government shutdown amendment to the 
CR last week, we would continue funding from last year knowing it would 
be reduced by 1 percent in 120 days, which gives us plenty of time to 
get the appropriations together, and then another 1 percent after 90 
days, and another 1 percent after the next 90 days.
  We wouldn't be sitting here today in the situation of a government 
shutdown had we passed that. The majority refused to allow that 
amendment to even come up for a vote. I don't know if we could have 
passed it or not. Again, 46 of us supported it last time. My sense is, 
given the fact that we were heading toward a government shutdown, we 
could have gotten a majority of this body to support that. But we don't 
know because, as is the case so often, the leadership here blocks 
amendments, so we never had the opportunity to have our voices be heard 
as Senators.
  Without a doubt, there is plenty of blame to go around, but whatever 
brought us to this point, it is where we are. I can promise this: As 
long as the White House and the majority in this Chamber continue to 
refuse to talk about it and negotiate, and as long as they refuse to 
attempt to find common ground--any common ground--we are not going to 
make progress. As long as they treat it as a political opportunity, one 
to score political points, then we are not going to be able to move 
forward. It is a failure of leadership because governing is about 
talking, negotiating, discussing, debating, and then finding common 
ground. It is hard, but it is what we are hired to do.
  We talk a lot in this Chamber about this notion of finding common 
ground, and I support it strongly. We don't do it enough. But to find 
common ground, you have to step off your own territory and on to some 
territory in the middle, and that requires negotiations. It requires 
sitting down with both parties and talking. It is what the American 
people, by the way, want us to do. They do it in their lives every day. 
We do it in our marriages and in our businesses. Yet, there is this 
unbelievable quote from this morning that I talked about by some senior 
official at the White House saying, ``We are winning . . . It doesn't 
matter to us'' how long it lasts.
  We have legislation coming over from the House to this Chamber that 
says: Let's have a conference. That is the conference between the House 
and the Senate. So there is a formal process where we have conferees 
over here--people to represent the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, 
and to represent the House, Republican and Democratic conferees. They 
come together and discuss, in this case, the continuing resolution and 
the debt limit, and that was tabled here. In other words, the majority 
here did not want to move to conference, so they blocked it. To me that 
seems to be the wrong approach. Let's have a conference and a 
discussion.
  By the way, this is on top of a hard-line position the President has 
taken, and I have talked about this over the last month because the 
President has been saying it for the last month. He has refused to talk 
about or negotiate on the debt limit. That is coming up in only a 
couple of weeks. As important as the government shutdown debate is, in 
my view, the debt limit discussion is even more important because it 
puts our country's economy at risk.
  I don't think we should be taking a position on anything if we don't 
talk, but certainly not on the debt limit discussion. The irony, which 
has been pointed out by others, is that we have a President of the 
United States who says he will negotiate with President Putin of 
Russia, but he will not talk with the Speaker of the House who is in 
the other party. To me it is irresponsible. It is a failure of 
leadership, and I don't think it is sustainable. I hope it is not.
  By the way, the President has said he refuses to talk about the debt 
limit because we should just extend the debt limit without any 
preconditions, without any reduction in spending, without even any 
discussion of what should go along with a debt limit extension. That, 
my friends, is not consistent with the historical precedent either. 
Every President, Republican and Democrat alike, has engaged in 
negotiations and discussions about the debt limit, in part, frankly, 
because the debt limit is a hard vote. The folks I represent back home 
get it. For them it is kind of like the credit card. Their deal is: OK, 
Congress has once again gone over their limit on their credit card.
  I have to be careful which credit card I hold up. I am not 
advertising for any particular one. This happens to be a MasterCard.
  They are saying: Before you guys extend the limit on the credit card, 
let's deal with the underlying problem. It's kind of like if your 
teenager puts you, as a parent, in a position of having gone over the 
line on the credit card. We have teenagers here who I am sure have 
never done that. Your parents would probably say, after they rip up the 
credit card, let's get at the underlying problem, which is the spending 
problem. Why are we spending more than we are taking in to the point we 
have to keep extending the limit on this credit card?
  The American people get it. That is why every President--Republicans 
and Democrats alike--has had to come to Congress and say: OK, how are 
we going to work together to extend this debt limit while also dealing 
with the underlying problem, which is the fact that we are spending too 
much? But this President refuses to do it.
  I have gone back and looked. For the last 3 decades the debt limit 
discussion is the only thing that has led to Congress doing anything 
substantial on spending. This is a period at which Congress has 
consistently spent more than it has taken in. Congress and the 
Presidents--Republican and Democrat alike--have led the country into 
deficits and debt. We are now at historic levels. This year the debt is 
just under $17 trillion. We are in uncharted territory. This year it is 
higher than ever. Yet this President is saying, unlike other 
Presidents, that he refuses to even talk about it.
  I will tell you what has happened. Over the last 30 years, every 
substantial deficit reduction has come in the context of a debt limit 
debate. Some may remember Gramm-Rudman back in the 1980s. It was 
considered historic legislation at the time, when we had smaller 
deficits and a much smaller debt. But it provided rescissions--across-
the-board spending cuts. It was bipartisan. It came out of a debt limit 
discussion.
  In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush, 
went out to Andrews Air Force Base, with Republicans and Democrats 
alike, to negotiate a budget agreement, it was in the context of a debt 
limit discussion. The pay-go rules that many Democrats now talk about 
favorably came out of the discussion about the debt limit.
  The 1997 balanced budget agreement with Newt Gingrich and Bill 
Clinton that ended up leading to the balanced

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budget we got a couple of years later came out of a discussion about 
the debt limit. Most recently, of course, the Budget Control Act came 
out of a discussion about the debt limit.
  So this notion that Presidents never talk about or negotiate on the 
debt limit is just not accurate in terms of our history. In fact, just 
the opposite is true. It is the only time we have been able to reduce 
spending.
  I see the distinguished majority leader is on the floor, so I will be 
short.
  We need to figure out how to come together. The President needs to 
engage. It is time to govern. If the President refuses to talk, we will 
not be able to come to an agreement. If he does engage, as history has 
shown us, tough decisions can be made.
  I have gone through a litany of times when we have done it. I have 
also talked about the fact that this year we have a bigger debt than 
ever, a bigger deficit than any of those historical examples I gave. 
Therefore, there is a greater need than ever for us to come together 
and find that common ground.
  Mr. WICKER. If the Senator would yield for a moment. I think the 
distinguished majority leader is going to make a procedural motion 
which will take only a moment, and then I have a question for my 
distinguished friend from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I will be happy to yield.

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