[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15614-15615]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     NEED TO REOPEN GOVERNMENT NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, the gentlelady just expressed the 
dynamics of a pending default, and I could not agree more with the 
horrors of her description. It baffles me, literally baffles me, that 
in actuality we are sitting idly by, the Republican leadership, 
watching Rome burn.
  Let me read for you a note that I got from my district, Mr. Speaker. 
``I have no idea if any of you still are in office, but until 
further,'' this is asking whether my staff is still in office, ``but 
until further notice we have been furloughed effective at 9 a.m. today. 
I will send you an email when back in the office, which I hope is soon, 
especially since the Senate has not yet passed a bill to pay us even if 
furloughed. So we just all hope this is a short time off.''
  Who is this? The Houston VA regional office. Isn't it interesting my 
friends rise to the floor of the House with such indignation about the 
VA, the VA centers, and, yes, tragically the devastation of families 
not receiving their memorial benefits; yet here we are today, another 
day of the government shutdown, and an email into our district offices 
indicating that the VA office is closed.
  Another emergency call came into my office as a fire ravaged a home 
of 40 or so veterans. In ordinary circumstances, they would have the VA 
office to help resettle them; but we are rolling up our sleeves in 
Houston and my message is to those veterans that we are going to work 
to find you a place to stay. But, Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the 
VA services are shut down while the home of those veterans burned. Who 
are we in this country if we cannot think of those who are lesser than 
we or who need to be helped with a helping hand?
  Mr. Speaker, let me also say to you that while we are in the midst of 
this shutdown, this Republican obsession

[[Page 15615]]

with the Affordable Care Act, poor people are suffering. There are 
millions of dollars impacted with the supplemental nutrition program, 
the school lunch program. Poor people need us to open the doors of this 
Congress to raise the minimum wage. Today is the day that I will 
celebrate and encourage America that the people of this country need to 
have a minimum wage of $10.10--$10.10.
  But we can't get any action in this place for the poor people of 
America. The families, the young families, the young mothers and 
fathers, the millions of children impacted by Head Start, some 57,000 
seats lost and growing across the Nation, poor people who need access 
to early education, poor people, both rural and urban, who need to have 
a minimum wage--Mr. Speaker, we can't do that because the government is 
shut down.
  Why is it shut down? Has there been a hurricane or has there been an 
earthquake? Is there a volcanic eruption? Is there some other natural 
disaster? Are we under siege by a foreign territory? No. There is an 
extreme faction in the Republican Party that dominates the dialogue and 
the action.
  What the American people want us to do is to vote now to open the 
government. They want what the Democrats want: to pay the bills. They 
want us to talk. We have been willing to talk. They want us to 
cooperate. We have been cooperating. We have agreed to the Republican 
number. We agreed to their tax issue, and yet they want to be obsessed 
with the Affordable Care Act. They want to take away health benefits 
from Americans.
  And then the votes that they put on the floor of the House, Mr. 
Speaker, these are political votes. We will vote again today, political 
votes, while people are suffering with cancer. And the Friends of 
Cancer Research will tell them a thing or two. Their letter says:

       The Friends of Cancer Research, a cancer research think-
     tank and advocacy organization that brings together people 
     and stakeholders who have overcome the barriers standing 
     between patient and treatment, urges Congress to take a 
     comprehensive approach to fiscal policy.

  They don't need a piecemeal bill on the floor of the House.
  We need to stop the extreme attitude. We need to recognize that the 
poor people of America, the people of America, need this shutdown to 
stop; and the extreme element of the Republican Party needs to stand 
down while Republicans, 20 of them, and Democrats, 200-plus, vote to 
open the government now.

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