[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15484-15485]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          HOUSE REPUBLICANS PASSING BILLS TO REOPEN GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Gibbs) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GIBBS. Mr. Speaker, like myself and many Americans, I am very 
frustrated over the inaction of Congress to get its work done; but 
let's look back at what has happened over the last week or so.
  The House Republicans, we have sent bills over to the Democratically-
controlled Senate to open the government, to run the government, to 
fund the government. We have sent, starting from delaying ObamaCare, 
which most Americans have serious problems with, to other bills, and I 
want to talk about the latter two that we sent.
  One was to fund the government completely until December 15, but also 
with two exceptions. The one exception is that Members of Congress and 
the President would live by the same rules under ObamaCare that all 
Americans have to. The other exception is ObamaCare. We need to delay 
those rules, and let's move on.
  The people that talk about the status quo in American history here, 
the status quo, if you vote for a clean CR, you want the status quo to 
remain the same. That means unemployment stays where it is, forcing 
Americans into part-time work. We need structural changes to the 
underlying problems. We need to address why our debt keeps going up.
  The President, yesterday, in his news conference, talked about 
raising the debt ceiling doesn't increase the debt ceiling, doesn't 
increase spending. Well, I wish the President would answer to me: When 
he took office, the debt was $10 trillion; now it is approaching $17 
trillion. How does raising the debt ceiling not increase the debt?
  The President talks about it is unprecedented, talking about the debt 
ceiling and having negotiations would be unprecedented if we do that. 
Well, Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O'Neill did it. Bill Clinton did 
it. President Obama did it in 2011 under the Budget Control Act. It is 
not unprecedented. And, interestingly, the times the President has been 
forced to negotiate are times when we have had crises that we have had 
to address, and the President did that in 2011.
  If ObamaCare is so good and it is the President's signature piece of 
legislation, he ought to be the first one to sign up for it. I believe 
the First Family ought to be the first in line to sign up for 
ObamaCare. But, you know what? The President of the United States is 
exempt from ObamaCare. It doesn't make sense. He ought to have to live 
by his own bills that he supported and pressed through.
  We talk about compromise. I am sure the President doesn't watch FOX 
News, but I think Bill O'Reilly has a compromise that maybe makes some 
sense. The individual mandate--that was one of the things we put in 
there, in one of those bills--we said delay the individual mandate for 
1 year. The President delayed the employer mandate for 1 year. It only 
makes sense, especially when you see so many people having trouble 
signing up, getting on and all the uncertainty. We are getting reports 
now of premiums going through the roof, higher deductibles, higher 
copays, and we need to delay it.
  One of the items we said in the bill was to delay the individual 
mandate for 1 year. That was rejected by the Senate. Also, we sent a 
bill over there to say, Okay, if you don't take that, let's just go to 
conference. Let's sit down and talk. Let's negotiate.
  But I think the compromise Bill O'Reilly put out on FOX News the 
other night makes some sense. Make the individual mandate voluntary, 
but don't force people to go on this. Delay it for 1 year. Don't force 
people to go on this and risk their privacy concerns, force them to pay 
higher insurance premiums for insurance they may not need. Let's see 
what happens.
  As ObamaCare moves through, I think that is a compromise that makes 
some sense, and the President ought to look at that and talk about 
that; but in

[[Page 15485]]

order to do that, he needs to come to the table. He needs to sit down 
with House Republicans and negotiate and work through the problems. 
That is how our system of government was set up, and that is how it is 
supposed to work. The Founders had that right, especially in divided 
government. So I encourage the President.
  Now, this morning there are some reports that the President is 
inviting the House and Senate Democrats to the White House later today, 
and supposedly we are going to get an invitation here soon. That is 
encouraging. I hope he is serious about sitting down and working out 
the differences, because we have to get back to the work the American 
people expect us to do.
  So I look forward to sitting down with the President and our 
leadership and working through these problems and getting the 
government going; but we can't do it without sitting down and talking 
and making sense and representing the American people, because we were 
elected to do that.

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