[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15613-15614]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                PAIN OF GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS TOO GREAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Smith) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, as this shutdown drags on--and 
I concur with the comments of my colleague from West Virginia--it is 
serious and having serious consequences. The American people are left 
to wonder why.
  Back here in Washington, D.C., you have all kinds of talking points 
and spin, and it circles around and can easily get very confusing as 
everyone seems to focus on the wrong things as to what caused this. 
And, really, it is very simple; and I think understanding it and 
getting Democrats and Republicans to stop talking past each other is 
the first step to getting out of this.
  We have to understand that basically when you pass a budget to fund 
the government, the first thing you argue about is how much money is 
spent on it; and we had that argument and, believe me, there are deep 
disagreements between the Republican House, the Democratic Senate, and 
the White House on that.
  But an agreement was reached between Speaker John Boehner and Harry 
Reid on the level of funding; and that level of funding, frankly, is 
vastly lower than Democrats want, and we were going to go forward with 
that until the Speaker changed his mind and decided that he wanted 
something else. So if you are wondering why Harry Reid, the Senator, 
the Majority Leader in the Senate, is upset about this situation, it is 
in part because he had a deal and the Republicans went back on that 
deal.
  But it gets worse than that. So instead of simply agreeing to the 
amount of money that would fund the government, Republicans are now 
saying, no, they want policy changes within the budget in order to fund 
the government, in order to just simply keep it open and in order to 
raise the debt ceiling so that we can pay our bills.
  Now, policy changes do occasionally happen within appropriations 
bills, but only when they are agreed upon between the House, the 
Senate, and the White House. And the problem that the Republicans have 
and what they have had for 3 years is they simply do not have the votes 
to pass the policy changes that they want because they didn't win the 
election last time. President Obama won the election, Democrats control 
the Senate, and, ironically, Democrats actually won 52 percent of the 
vote for Congress, but because of gerrymandering, Republicans wound up 
with more seats.
  But however we got here, they do not have the votes to advance the 
agenda that they want to advance, and they are willing to shut down the 
government and stop funding it and not raise our debt ceiling; and, by 
the way, every day we get closer to that debt ceiling and not raising 
it is a day that is bad for this economy, all because they can't pass 
their policy agenda through the present Congress. Which raises the 
interesting question, What is that policy agenda? And that perhaps is 
the most frustrating thing about this.
  We heard originally that they didn't pass the continuing resolution 
to fund the government because they wanted to end ObamaCare. Now 
editorials have been written by leaders; by the majority leader, Mr. 
Cantor. I have heard Paul Ryan say, no, no, no, it is not about 
ObamaCare; we understand we are not going to get that. Okay. So what 
policy change is it that you want? And this is where you get into the 
deficit. But, again, the Republicans haven't specified what they want 
on this.
  Now, we know if you go back through 3 years of history, what they say 
they want, they want tax reform, though it hasn't been specified, and 
they want

[[Page 15614]]

cuts in entitlements to get us closer to a balanced budget. They are 
completely unwilling to consider any revenue increases.
  Now, the problem with this is the President doesn't agree. The Senate 
doesn't agree. The deficit is a problem, no question, but Democrats 
believe that part of that solution has to be revenue; and to this point 
we get $600 billion in revenue as a result of the deal that was reached 
last January in exchange for over $2 trillion in cuts, $2 trillion 
between the cuts that were made in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and 
the cuts that have now been forced on us by sequestration, $2 trillion 
in cuts and $600 billion in tax increases.
  But be that as it may, the Republicans don't have the votes. They 
don't have the support of the President, and they don't have the 
support of the Senate to get those cuts, and yet they insist on 
shutting down the government.
  Now, the big problem is what is it that they would want in tax reform 
and entitlement reform? And this is the thing that I think the American 
public is unaware of. The Republicans keep saying that they want 
entitlement reform, which means cuts in entitlements. They keep saying 
that they want tax reform. They have been in charge of this House for 3 
years. They have not brought to the floor or passed out of committee 
any tax reform or any entitlement reform.
  They put it in their budget, which is just sort of a big-picture list 
of future objectives of what they want to do. Why haven't they passed 
legislation? If they are willing to shut down the government and cause 
all of the pain that we have heard because they fervently believe that 
we need entitlement cuts and tax reform, the least they can do is bring 
it to the floor and tell us what it is.
  Oddly, the President and Democrats have put more on the table in 
terms of reforming our entitlements. As part of the Affordable Care 
Act, we made reductions in Medicare, which the Republicans beat us up 
for and which has been responsible for Medicare actually going down in 
inflation.
  The only solution for this, tell us what you want and understand how 
this situation works. The pain is too great.

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