[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15619]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      HOW THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS HARMING THE PEOPLE OF HOUSTON

  (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to associate 
myself with the remarks of my colleague and classmate from South 
Carolina on how we will miss Chairman Young. He has been a great 
statesman in serving our House.
  But today I am here to talk about how we are 10 days into the 
Republican shutdown of the government services. Every week the shutdown 
continues cuts 0.3 percent of our gross domestic product, and the stock 
market has dropped 900 points in the last 2 weeks. Now they want to 
hold the full faith and credit of our country hostage.
  This is how it is hurting our Houston area economy:
  Over 3,100 NASA employees at Johnson Space Center in Houston have 
been furloughed as a result of the House majority's refusal to keep the 
government open;
  The Small Business Administration has closed its Houston office and 
is unable to issue grants and loans and services to small business 
owners;
  Houston's regional VA center is closed. The government shutdown has 
forced VA to furlough 9,000 employees, delaying processing of the VA 
benefits.
  If the shutdown continues into late October, payments for more than 
3.8 million veterans will stop. We owe it to our Nation's veterans to 
make good on our commitments to them, and we can't do this with closed 
facilities.

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