[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15305-15306]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives, John Boehner, on national TV claimed there are not 
enough votes to pass the bill and bring an end to the dangerous 
government shutdown. I believe he is mistaken.
  Two hundred Democratic Members of the House of Representatives said 
they would vote for the bill to reopen the government, and 22 
Republicans in the House have said publicly they would vote for the 
bill. We have heard there are as many as 100 who wish to vote for it. 
No matter how we do the math, it adds up to a majority of the Members 
of the House of Representatives.
  If there were only a mechanism for polling all Members of the House 
of Representatives to find out whether they support the Senate-passed 
bill, one surefire way to find out whether the bill would pass is to 
have a vote on it; that is, to vote on the legislation that has already 
been passed in the Senate.
  There is a way; have a vote. That would settle the question for a 
long, long, time, wouldn't it.
  What I say to the Speaker: Allow a vote on the resolution that would 
end the shutdown, legislation that you, John Boehner, proposed in the 
first place. The entire Federal Government could reopen for business by 
tomorrow morning.
  I ask the Speaker, why are you afraid? Are you afraid this measure 
will pass, the government will reopen and America will realize you took 
the country hostage for no apparent reason?
  Why is the Speaker opposed to these reasonable solutions?
  Across the Nation people are suffering--not only Federal employees--
because of his irresponsible action, the irresponsible tea party driven 
action. But it is not, I say, only Federal employees. US Air had a 
delivery last Friday of a $180 million aircraft. They couldn't take 
delivery. Why? Because there weren't inspectors to do that for those 
aircraft.
  We know that Lockheed has already announced today they are laying off 
3,000 people, and there is more to come in the defense industry. It is 
happening all through the government.
  There is an easy way out of this; the same escape hatch has been 
available as long as we have been a country. It is called a vote. But 
for the 7 days the Federal Government has been closed for business, the 
Speaker has refused to use that escape hatch.
  It is so important when people wish to buy a home. One can't buy a 
home with an FHA loan today. Even if it is not FHA, they can't get them 
done because to confirm the amount of money that is on the application 
they need an IRS person to check it. They are not available.
  The Senate-passed bill to reopen the government, while we work out 
our budget differences, wasn't my idea. It was his idea. The Speaker of 
the House of Representatives said: You do this CR at this number, and I 
will get it done.
  We negotiated for a while. I agreed to his number. It was very hard 
to do for us in the Democratic Caucus. But it was his idea, not my 
idea. All this talk about not negotiating, that is what that was all 
about. He admits it was his intention all along to pass a clean 
resolution. But then he ran into the tea party, a minority within a 
majority

[[Page 15306]]

that runs the majority in the House of Representatives.
  The bill before the House of Representatives is a compromise by us, a 
compromise that was difficult, I repeat, to get my caucus to accept. 
Now that we have compromised, the Speaker won't take yes for an answer. 
He has moved the goal line again.
  Last week he said he wanted to go to conference to work out some 
differences. As we heard on national TV yesterday, he is not only 
concerned about ObamaCare, he is concerned about the budget deficit, as 
we all are. He keeps changing. He said he wanted to talk about that. 
Fine. We are happy to do that. If he wants to talk about ObamaCare, if 
he wants to talk about anything else, we will do it. I put that in 
writing and had it hand delivered to him. We said that we would talk 
about agriculture, we would talk about health care, we would talk about 
domestic discretionary spending, military spending, and anything he 
wishes to talk about. We have been asking to go to conference on a 
responsible budget for more than 6 months.
  On national TV, the Speaker said Chairman Ryan and Chairman Murray 
have been working together for a long time. As I have indicated here 
previously, he said that in a meeting we had in the White House in the 
last few days. I said in front of everybody there: It is simply not 
factual.
  Senator Murray issued a statement yesterday after she heard him 
saying this on national TV saying that is not true. They have had a 
couple of meetings but they haven't discussed anything substantive. I 
guess the meetings were only to say to the Speaker they met, but they 
talked about nothing in her budget or his budget.
  We are saying simply, reopen the government. We have said we will go 
to your budget number. We don't like it. We have said we will go to 
conference and talk about anything you want.
  He can't take yes for an answer.
  Simply reopen the government. We will talk, I repeat, about anything 
you wish to talk about. We are not afraid to negotiate. We are not 
afraid to make reasonable compromises. Once again the football was 
moved, just like Lucy in the ``Peanuts'' cartoon.
  As Judd Legum, editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress pointed out, 
Republicans have a strange definition of compromise. This is how he 
explains it:
  Republicans ask: ``Can I burn down your house?'' We say: ``No.'' 
Republicans ask: ``Just the second floor?'' We say: ``No.'' Republicans 
ask: ``[Just the] garage?'' We say: ``No.'' Republicans say: ``Let's 
talk about what I can burn down.'' We say: ``No.'' Then Republicans 
say: ``You're not compromising!''
  Republicans insist we must negotiate while the Federal Government 
remains closed. As The New York Times editorial reported on Saturday, 
when 800,000 Federal employees are furloughed, government services are 
shut down and the economy is flagging, it is hardly time for talking.
  Then they come up with all this: We will do an NIH bill. We will open 
NIH.
  The problem is, it is really hard to pick and choose between that and 
the Park Service, especially when we consider they have cut spending 
this year for NIH by $1.6 billion; the second year of their famous 
sequestration, $2 billion. This is all a charade.
  This is what the Times wrote after the brief introduction:

       This is a moment for immediate action to reopen the 
     government's doors, not the beginning of a conversation 
     Republicans spurned when they lacked the leverage of a 
     shutdown.
       [Republicans] have refused to negotiate over the Senate's 
     budget, they have refused to negotiate over the President's 
     budget, and they have refused to negotiate to make the health 
     law more efficient. . . . The two sides will eventually have 
     to reach a reckoning on long-term economic issues, but the 
     time to do so is not while dangling over an abyss.

  Democrats are willing to negotiate but won't negotiate with a gun to 
our heads. We say to our Republican colleagues: End this irresponsible 
government shutdown. Stop your reckless threats of a default on the 
Nation's obligations. Then Democrats will negotiate over anything, 
anything our Republican colleagues wish to negotiate.

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