[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15668-15689]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      DEFAULT PREVENTION ACT OF 2013--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators be 
permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, we are in the 11th day of the government 
shutdown. We have caused great harm to the people of this country. We 
have already caused harm. We have hurt the United States on the 
international front. The President, as I mentioned previously, was 
absent at the Asian economic summit. The Asian economic summit was the 
opportunity for America, the President of the United States, to be the 
headliner. Instead, the President of China, President Xi, became the 
headliner. There were questions asked about whether America is ``open 
for business'' with our trading partners. We have been hurt by this 
shutdown, make no mistake about it.
  Our economy has suffered. Just the threat of defaulting--of not 
paying our bills--has hurt consumer confidence. Consumer confidence 
measures whether consumers are ready to go out and buy that car, buy 
that home, go on vacation. After the terrorist attacks on the country 
on September 11, 2001, consumer confidence dropped by about 8.8 
percent. I could go over other calamitous moments in history, but the 
debt ceiling debate today is about twice as damaging to consumer 
confidence as the 9/11 attack. We are talking about paying our bills 
when we talk about raising the debt ceiling--bills that have already 
been incurred. We are just paying the bills.
  Mr. President, we are hurting our country. We are hurting our 
economy. We are wasting taxpayer dollars. We all talk about dealing 
with the debt. But in the government shutdown, we have wasted over $2 
billion of taxpayer money as a result of it.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, in this region--Maryland, Virginia, 
the District--we have over 300,000 Federal workers who are on furlough 
of the 800,000 who are furloughed nationwide. That has a direct impact 
on families as well as our economy. These Federal workers are not 
buying in their local shops, they are not eating in the local 
restaurants. I stopped into a restaurant for a sandwich over the last 
weekend. I said: How are things going? The shopowner said: Terrible. 
Social Security employees are not here. I cannot keep my business open 
without their business.
  We have seen the direct impact. I have tried to put faces on these 
numbers. We could talk about the statistics and the numbers. Let's talk 
about people, the individual people I hear from--I know the Presiding 
Officer has received calls from constituents in Virginia. It is the 
same story.
  Over a week ago we brought in Amy Fritz who works at the National 
Oceanic & Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA). She is a Federal worker who 
is furloughed. She tracks weather conditions and works on the computer 
models to predict how storms will behave. It is a pretty important 
position she has. She was telling of the hardship to her family. The 
Baltimore Sun reported today that at NOAA it is not just the Federal 
workers, it is the contract workers who are suffering. The Sun cited 
the example of Tiffany House, a person who lives in Hyattsville, MD. 
She is a single mom, a contract employee of NOAA, who has been laid off 
as a result of the shutdown. It is more than just 800,000 Federal 
workers; we have the contract workers who have been laid off as a 
result of the shutdown.
  She said, ``Even though we're furloughed and we are not getting paid, 
the bills keep coming.''
  There are a lot of hard-working families who live paycheck to 
paycheck. We are 11 days into this government shutdown. Families are 
wondering what they are going to do when it comes to paying their 
bills.
  The Sun reported about Keith Tate from Hyattsville. He works for FM 
Talent Source in Silver Spring. Almost 30 percent of their contract 
employees, 92 people in total, have been laid off. He was starting work 
on October 1--his luck. He was looking forward to it. He went to work 
on October 1 but then was furloughed as a result of the government 
shutdown.
  The effect goes well beyond individual people that you would expect, 
like Federal employees and contractors. I have a friend, Hugh Sisson, 
who started Heavy Seas Brewery in Baltimore. It is one of America's 
great craft breweries. He is doing a great job and hiring people. You 
may say, ``How does this affect him? He sells beer.'' Well, beer sales 
are affected by furloughs and a drop in consumer confidence, but it's 
worse than that. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) 
employees at the Department of the Treasury have been furloughed. 
They're the people who review and approve new breweries, recipes, and 
labels. Hugh told me, ``We have eight labels waiting for approval and 
10 formulas we would like to start the process on but can't at this 
time.''
  Craft brewers like Hugh Sisson are innovators, constantly introducing 
new beers and seasonal beers, fresh products. They are being hurt all 
over the Nation as a result of the TTB staff being furloughed. They 
don't just hire their own staff; they support jobs in agriculture for 
barley and hops and other ingredients; in manufacturing for stainless 
steel kettles and fermenters and bottling and canning lines; and in 
distribution and retail. These are blue collar jobs and white collar 
jobs. All across America. These are jobs that won't be outsourced 
overseas. And this

[[Page 15669]]

shutdown is hurting America's craft brewers.
  This shutdown is hurting our economy, hurting our country, hurting 
individuals, hurting taxpayers, hurting businesses. We can do much 
better. In my State of Maryland 10 percent of our workforce works for 
the Federal Government. The dedicated employees at these agencies do 
work that's important to all Americans, not just Marylanders.
  As I pointed out previously, Harbor Point is one of the most 
important economic developments in downtown Baltimore, but it's RCRA 
site--that stands for the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act--which 
means it requires the consent of government, the Environmental 
Protection Agency (EPA), before this enormous economic development 
project can move forward. The people at EPA who would approve this 
project have been furloughed. This economic project now is on hold.
  I could mention other examples of agencies that are critically 
important. I could also talk a lot more about private employment. It is 
not just government employment, it is private employment. Convergence 
Technology Consulting, located in Glen Burnie, MD, does cloud computing 
services for the Department of Defense. Twenty percent of the firm's 65 
employees have been laid off.
  TW Corporation in Hanover does cyber security work, and one-third of 
its 700 employees were furloughed. The list of the damages caused by 
the government shutdown goes on and on.
  My message is pretty simple. We have to make sure government is open. 
We have to make sure we open government, and we have to pay our bills.
  I understand we would like to have an agreement on a budget. I would 
like to have an agreement on the budget. For 6 months we have been 
trying to go to conference. The Senate passed a budget, the House 
passed a budget. They are different. The Senate budget, one that I 
supported, the Presiding Officer supported, would provide more 
resources for job growth by investing in infrastructure, by investing 
in education, by investing in research. Yes, we do provide more 
revenues by closing tax loopholes. We also start to rein in government 
spending and continue to do that. The House-passed budget has fewer of 
those investments. It does not close the loopholes in our Tax Code. 
That is what we have to negotiate between Democrats and Republicans. 
That is what we need to do. But the first order of business is to 
reopen government--all of it--and pay our bills, and then let's sit 
down and negotiate. We cannot wait. We must have government open.
  I quoted before from the Baltimore Sun and the paper's analogy of 
negotiations. It is difficult when this is all one-sided. As Sunpapers 
said:

       So when Speaker Boehner lashes out at President Obama for 
     failing to negotiate, one has to ask, what is this thing he 
     describes as negotiation? House Republicans are not merely 
     leveraging their political position--as some dryly claim--
     they are threatening to do grievous harm to the global 
     economy and the American public. The gun isn't raised to Mr. 
     Obama's head or to the Senate's. The Democrats have no 
     particular stake in passing a continuing resolution or in 
     raising the debt ceiling other than keeping public order and 
     doing what any reasonable person expects Congress to do. No, 
     the gun is raised at the nation as a whole. That's why 
     descriptions like ``ransom'' and ``hostage'' are not mere 
     hyperbole, they are as close as the English language gets to 
     accurately describing the GOP strategy.

  Our message is clear to House Speaker Boehner: Put down the gun. Put 
it down. Open government. Allow us to pay our bills. And, yes, we want 
to sit down and work out our differences. Let the democratic process 
proceed. Open government, pay our bills, and then let's negotiate a 
fair and comprehensive agreement on the budget.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to speak for about 10 
minutes. I understand there may be other Senators coming to the floor. 
I wanted to express my concerns about a few issues that are really 
important to the people of Louisiana.
  I understand that the meeting with the President and the Republicans 
in the Senate--our friends--has just concluded. I am hoping there will 
be some positive steps forward from that meeting so we can open this 
government, remove the threat of an economic collapse, and get to the 
bargaining table to which we have literally been trying to achieve for 
6 months. We voted 21 times in the Senate to get to the negotiating 
table in the budget conference, which is the first starting point to 
agree on numbers and revenues and spending limits.
  As an appropriator--I would know this as chair of the Appropriations 
Committee--the next step in regular order is for each individual 
committee to negotiate with our Republican counterparts about how we 
allocate the money given to us through that budget process.
  None of that has been able to happen--none. It is not because 
Democrats have been unwilling to go to the negotiating table, but 
because some friends on the other side have taken hostage innocents--
Federal employees, the economy generally--and demanded things that are 
way beyond their ability to use their political leverage. So instead of 
using it correctly, they have held innocent hostages. It is very 
troubling, and I think it is very wrong. Hopefully, we are going to 
find a way forward.


                            Flood Insurance

  I wanted to spend my time this afternoon talking about what I am 
hearing from the people in Louisiana, such as: Could you all get back 
to work because we have some serious problems that need to be solved. 
One of the problems--Mr. President, maybe your State is affected by 
this because the Presiding Officer has a coastal area, as do we--is 
fixing this very broken flood insurance system. In our State it is 
referred to as Biggert-Waters. It was named after the two Members of 
Congress who led this ``reform effort.''
  Maxine Waters has subsequently completely disassociated herself with 
the legislation and said it was not the right thing to do. She has made 
several public statements. She has urged, as the leader in the House, 
with Republicans and Democrats, to get this fixed.
  For the people of Louisiana, this is our No. 1 problem and challenge 
right now because a year and a half ago the Federal Government passed a 
law that was supposed to cure something. But the cure is worse than the 
disease. The disease was we had a flood insurance program that spent 
more money than it had taken in. And, yes, premiums were probably too 
low to sustain the program, but it was giving people at least some 
option and hope when they had a flood, so they could get some of the 
equity in their home protected and recovered.
  This bill came along and was never debated on the Senate floor. It 
was stuck in a conference committee report, and now it is being 
implemented, and it is a disaster. We have 400,000 flood insurance 
policies in Louisiana, Texas has 700,000, Florida has over 2 million, 
Pennsylvania has over 75,000, and Virginia probably has between 40,000 
and 50,000. I don't have the list in front of me.
  The problem is that the law that passed had stated one goal: to make 
the program sustainable. But it left out an equally important aspect: 
to make it affordable. You can sustain a program all day long, but if 
nobody can afford to be in it, A, how long will it sustain itself? Not 
long at all. And, B, we are hurting the people we are trying to help 
the most.
  A group of us have been working for quite some time on fixing this. 
These new regulations went into effect on October 1. We are going on 11 
or 12 days--I forget the date, but we are past October 1. These new 
rates have gone into effect, and some people are seeing rates 
quadruple--or tenfold. Some of these rates are going up from $300 a 
year to $3,000. In some cases we have heard $1,500 to $30,000. I am not 
exaggerating

[[Page 15670]]

or making this up. This is all in the record.
  We have a way to fix it. The good news I wanted to share on the floor 
today is that we had 24 Senators, Republicans and Democrats, come 
together this week and send a ``dear colleague'' letter to our 
leadership--to the Republican leadership and the House leadership--to 
say that we are very close to a compromise that will do two things: It 
will give us time to get the affordability study that was supposed to 
be done actually done. It will allow FEMA to potentially--with some 
oversight from Congress--set rates that would keep the program 
functioning but not jeopardize people's equity in their homes.
  It would, of course, remove the automatic trigger provision that has 
been very detrimental in the law, which basically says: The rates will 
stay low, but the minute people put a house up for sale or sell a 
house, whatever grandfathered rate they had is gone. And it doesn't go 
up 25 percent a year, it goes up to where it should be. In some cases 
that is a move from $1,000 a year to $30,000 a year. It makes their 
house worthless, and that is what is happening to thousands of people. 
They have lost equity in their home. It is one of many problems this 
Congress has to fix. We can't fix any of them if we can't get back to 
work. We need the officials that have been laid off at FEMA to go back 
to work.
  One point I want to make today is let's find a way forward to 
negotiate. I hope part of the negotiation could potentially be a fix to 
Biggert-Waters. I want to thank Senator Merkley from Oregon, Senator 
Menendez from New Jersey, Senator Wicker from Mississippi, and Senator 
Vitter from Louisiana. Senator Isakson has been giving us some good 
input. I want to thank the realtors and the bankers because they 
realized that we made a mistake and that the law we passed was not a 
good one. Sometimes that happens.
  We have to fix it. We don't have to fix the whole of it, but we are 
working on some pieces that must be amended so that it accomplishes the 
goal of having a program and so that taxpayers do not have to pick up a 
big tab every year. It will allow real estate markets to function, 
people to be able to retain equity in their home, and to pay their fair 
share. It will also encourage smart growth and development.
  Also--and very importantly, which is part of the problem with 
Biggert-Waters--the bill we are trying to fix didn't even recognize 
levees. I don't know if the Presiding Officer has a lot of levees in 
Virginia, but we have to have them in Louisiana because we are below 
sea level. We have been that way for 300 years. We moved there below 
sea level. We had to be there to create the Port of New Orleans.
  Thomas Jefferson leveraged the whole Federal Treasury to buy us for 3 
cents an acre, if I remember correctly--the bulk of 19 States. It was 
the greatest real estate purchase in the history of our country. Alaska 
may argue, but we think the Louisiana Territory is equally as valuable, 
if not more so, and our State is proud to carry that name. People 
understand the history of this.
  Why would Thomas Jefferson leverage the whole Treasury of the United 
States to buy something that was not worthwhile. Of course it is 
worthwhile. It was worthwhile then, and it is worthwhile now.
  People live there because we run the biggest port system in the 
world, and we need to continue to live there with all of the 
industries--oil and gas, and fisheries, et cetera.
  This Biggert-Waters bill undermines our region's ability to function. 
We produce 17 percent of the GDP for the country, so this is not a 
small parochial issue to the Southern States: Texas, Louisiana, 
Alabama, Mississippi, et cetera--but it also affects interior states. 
We have seen what happened in Colorado. We have seen what happened to 
the east coast States, with New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, et 
cetera.
  Let's get to the negotiating table. Let's work together, as we know 
we can, and let's put on the top of that agenda a potential fix for 
Biggert-Waters.
  Again, I thank my colleagues for working so cordially together even 
in this difficult time.
  Let me move to another subject for a minute and put into the Record, 
in the event that my colleagues--do I have to ask for an additional 3 
minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record this letter that I received. I think all of the Members 
received this letter that was addressed to Senator Reid, Senator 
McConnell, Speaker Boehner, and Representative Pelosi from the National 
Governors Association that came yesterday.
  Governor Mary Fallin and Governor John Hickenlooper signed the letter 
on behalf of all the Governors, and it says:

       The nation's governors urge Congress and the Administration 
     to quickly reopen the federal government.
       The fiscal health of states is inextricably linked to the 
     fiscal stability of the federal government, and while state 
     economies have improved, a failure by our national government 
     to secure a solution to the current government budget issues 
     undermines our states' recovery and endangers the U.S. 
     economy.

  It goes on to say:

       States have thus far managed to avoid closing or suspending 
     most programs and services by using carry-over funds or, in 
     some cases, by using state spending to fill in missing 
     federal dollars. However, states are not in the position to 
     be the bank for the federal government.

  As a former Governor, the Presiding Officer understands this. I was a 
former Treasurer. I most certainly understand that the budget of 
Louisiana is almost 70 percent Federal funding. So when the Federal 
Government cuts off that funding, it starts to affect the way States--
and the 300-plus cities in my State--operate, and it affects our 
private sector partners that work with us to provide State-level and 
community services. It affects nonprofits such as Catholic Charities, 
who are running some of our low-income housing, our justice programs in 
some of our neighborhoods and communities.
  This shutdown is just bad. It is bad all around. It should not have 
happened. We need to get this government open and operating, which will 
help our States and their economic recovery plans to start focusing on 
fixing things. We need to fix things like Biggert-Waters and repeal 
that old insurance reform bill so we can find a better way forward.
  I might also mention two other things quickly. What is also happening 
in our State today--I got news this morning--is that permitting in the 
Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil and gas drilling is now shut down. 
Right at the time when America is about to overtake Russia as the 
largest domestic producer of gas and oil, right when we are about to 
take first place, the Republican tea party has shut the government down 
and shut down permitting in the gulf.
  Ever since the Deepwater Horizon, we have been fighting to get that 
back up and going. Now we find it has been shut down again. The people 
I represent cannot take another shutdown of permitting.
  We have levees to build. We have a big problem in our river parishes, 
as we call them, along Lake Pontchartrain. We have Morganza to the 
gulf, which is an important levee project for Houma, which is one of 
the centers for oil and gas production. This not only helps the people 
of Houma and Terrebonne Parish, but it helps the whole region and the 
whole country. It is sort of like a little Houston, if you will. Houma 
is like a little Houston. We don't have all of the corporate 
structures, but we have all of the know-how, the goods and services, 
the providers, the boats, the planes, the ships, and the helicopters. 
They might have the gleaming office towers in Houston, but we have a 
lot of the hard workers in Houma.
  The levee that protects them and their homes is now basically--the 
plans for it are shut down along with this tea party shutdown.


[[Page 15671]]


                                                          National


                                        Governors Association,

                                 Washington, DC, October 10, 2013.
     Hon. Harry Reid,
     Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. John Boehner,
     Speaker of the House, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Nancy Pelosi,
     Minority Leader, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Majority Leader Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker 
     Boehner, and Representative Pelosi: The nation's governors 
     urge Congress and the Administration to quickly reopen the 
     federal government.
       The fiscal health of states is inextricably linked to the 
     fiscal stability of the federal government, and while state 
     economies have improved, a failure by our national government 
     to secure a solution to the current budget issues undermines 
     our states' recovery and endangers the U.S. economy.
       States have thus far managed to avoid closing or suspending 
     most programs and services by using carryover funds or, in 
     some cases, by using state spending to fill in for missing 
     federal dollars. However, states are not in a position to be 
     the bank for the federal government. As this impasse 
     continues, we call on Congress and the Administration to 
     commit to fully reimbursing states and territories for the 
     federal expenses they absorb during the shutdown. These 
     expenses include funding for programs, state employees who 
     are paid through federal funds and any other outlays that 
     would normally have been supported by federal funds.
       As governors, our citizens expect us to work together to 
     balance our budgets and make government work. We will do 
     whatever we can to serve our citizens and deliver the core 
     services they need and expect during this uncertain time. In 
     return, we ask our federal partners to quickly find a path 
     forward that reimburses states for incurred federal expenses; 
     restores certainty in the federal budget process; creates 
     long-term stability; and strengthens the fiscal condition of 
     the nation for the benefit of all citizens.
           Sincerely,
                                             Governor Mary Fallin.
                                       Governor John Hickenlooper.

  It is time to open our government. It is time to get back to work, 
solve real problems, and negotiate in good faith without taking 
innocent hostages. There are too many innocents being harmed, whether 
it is children with cancer, whether it is businesspeople who have put 
everything on the line for their business and through no fault of their 
own now have no customers coming in the front door and can't pay their 
note--and the banks aren't going to wait until we get our act together.
  I thank the Presiding Officer. I wanted to, if I could, take 1 more 
minute to speak on behalf of the people who don't have a Senator here; 
that is, the District of Columbia.
  The District of Columbia is technically not a part of the Federal 
Government. They are not an agency of the Federal Government. They are 
not a department of the Federal Government. The District of Columbia is 
the district in which the Federal Government resides. Contrary to 
popular belief, they raise most of their money through their own tax 
revenue generated--about 75 percent local. Twenty-five percent of the 
budget of the District of Columbia--which has about 750,000 people, 
which is a pretty big city as cities go--comes from the people who live 
here. They have been caught up as if they were an agency of the Federal 
Government.
  Let me argue on their behalf to my colleagues and suggest that they 
are a group of innocents--a city. Baltimore's budget is not shut down, 
Richmond's budget is not shut down, New Orleans' budget is not shut 
down, Chicago's budget is not shut down, New York's budget is not shut 
down, San Francisco's budget is not shut down, but the DC government is 
shut down because of this threat. They have gotten caught up. They 
should be let go, and we can then negotiate on all other things.
  I think the President understands this. I know majority leader Harry 
Reid understands this. I am hoping minority leader Mitch McConnell will 
give his support so this can be done in a bipartisan way, recognizing 
this is the Nation's Capital--not asking for any special preference for 
them, just allowing them to use their own money and operate their own 
city while we try to figure out how to get the rest of the government 
open and operating. I hope we can do that today. We have been working 
across the aisle.
  I thank Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton for her leadership. The 
District of Columbia does not have Senators, so a few of us have to 
stand and speak for the people of the District, and I am happy to try 
to do that on occasion when I, of course, believe strongly in what they 
are asking.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Donnelly). The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, it is no secret to anybody that the 
American people are frustrated and they are disgusted with what is 
going on in Washington.
  The Presiding Officer may have seen The Onion magazine, the satirical 
magazine that ran a story which says that at a time when 5 percent of 
the American people approve of what is going on in Congress, The Onion 
reported psychiatrists are deeply worried about the mental health of 5 
percent of the American public. In other words, all over this country, 
regardless of political persuasion, people literally cannot understand 
what is going on, and they have every reason to be outraged and 
frustrated because so many people today are being hurt.
  We can disagree about the Affordable Care Act. We as a nation can 
disagree about how we address Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, 
global warming, or any other issue out there. But what should not be 
happening is that this government and the American people should not be 
held hostage by an extreme right wing of the Republican Party saying: 
Well, yeah, we lost the election by 5 million votes, we lost two seats 
in the Senate, we lost seats in the House, but nonetheless, unless we 
get the agenda we campaigned on and lost, we are going to shut down the 
Federal Government. We are going to punish millions of Federal 
employees and tens of millions of taxpayers who paid for Federal 
services. Also, for the first time in the history of the United States 
of America, we are not going to pay our bills and as a result perhaps 
thrust the American financial system and the world's financial system 
into a horrendous recession.
  What the American people are saying over and over, regardless of 
political persuasion, is, yes, we can disagree on issues; no, we cannot 
bring the U.S. Government to a halt and default on our payments because 
a particular faction disagrees on certain legislation.
  Interestingly enough, a couple of days ago I gathered that we had to 
bring the government to a halt and that we had to not pay our bills and 
bring the world's financial system into crisis because of the horrors 
of ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. That was the reason. Well, 2 
days have come and gone and guess what. It is not the Affordable Care 
Act. That is no longer being discussed. Today, I gather--I haven't seen 
the news in the last 15 minutes, but the last I heard the reason we are 
shutting down the government and threatening not to pay our bills is 
that we are spending too much money and the deficit is too high. I 
gather that is the latest reason.
  Clearly, a deficit of $700 billion and a debt of $16.7 trillion is 
too much, but let's make a couple of points about that issue.
  First, in the last 3 years we have cut the deficit in half. A few 
years ago it was $1.4 trillion, and today it is $700 billion. That is 
not an insignificant effort.
  Second, and perhaps most important, we have to understand how we got 
to where we are in terms of the debt and in terms of the deficit. Do we 
have a large deficit because we are spending

[[Page 15672]]

too much on Social Security? Well, actually not because Social Security 
is independently funded through the payroll tax and hasn't added one 
nickel to the deficit. So it is not Social Security. We will talk about 
Medicare and Medicaid in a moment. But the reason we have seen a spike 
in the deficit in recent years has to do with the fact that many of my 
deficit hawk Republican friends--and some Democrats--voted for the war 
in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they forgot to pay for that war--just a 
slip; they just forgot about it--and those wars are going to cost 
between $3 trillion and $6 trillion. So I want everyone to remember 
that the great deficit hawks who are busy trying to cut every program 
that working families in this country need forgot to pay for wars in 
Iraq and Afghanistan that will cost between $3 trillion and $6 
trillion.
  The third issue is that our great deficit hawks had no problem during 
the Bush era giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this 
country.
  Fourth, of course, is that as a result of deregulation and greed and 
recklessness and illegal behavior, Wall Street brought us to a 
financial collapse and a recession, with the result that revenue 
substantially declined.
  I raise those issues, giving a little bit of history about how we got 
into the deficit today, because now, I guess, Congressman Ryan and 
others have decided that the reason we shut down the government is not 
because of ObamaCare, it is because there is too much spending, and 
that translates into their desire to cut Social Security, Medicare, 
Medicaid, and to cut other vitally important programs for the middle-
class and working families of this country.
  Before we talk about the pain that would be caused by making savage 
cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, it is important to put 
this discussion in a broader context. If we go out to the American 
people and ask people in Virginia and people in Vermont and people all 
over this country and if we look at virtually every single poll that 
has been done in recent years asking the American people what they 
consider to be the most important issues facing them, do we know what 
they say? They say the deficit is important, but what is much more 
important is the issue of high unemployment and the economy in general. 
That is what every single poll shows. And the American people are 
right.
  The deficit is important. What is even more important is addressing 
the reality that almost 14 percent of our workforce--if we count those 
people who have given up looking for work and are working part time, 
almost 14 percent of our workforce today is unemployed. What the 
American people are saying to Congress is create jobs, deal with 
unemployment.
  The other issue out there that all across this country people are 
deeply worried about is that most of the new jobs being created--and 
this has been the case for a number of years now--most of the jobs 
being created are part-time, low-wage jobs.
  How is somebody supposed to survive working for $10 an hour and 
getting 25 hours of work a week? You cannot do it, and we are seeing 
more and more of those types of jobs in the economy--by the way, jobs 
that provide little or no benefits.
  What the American people are saying is raise the minimum wage. I 
cannot remember what the last poll was, but surely more than 70 percent 
of the American people have said: A minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a 
starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage.
  Anybody who has kids in college today understands it is harder and 
harder for working-class and middle-class families to send their kids 
to college. The American people are saying to us: Do something. You 
tell us what is true--that it is hard to make it into the middle class 
unless kids have a college education. Well, do something to make 
college affordable. Do not have my kid leaving college or graduate 
school $50,000 in debt or $80,000 in debt. Do something about that.
  Anybody who drives anywhere in America, in Vermont or in Indiana or 
anyplace else, understands that our infrastructure--our roads, our 
bridges, wastewater plants, water plants, our rail system--is 
deteriorating rapidly, and they say: Do something about the 
infrastructure.
  As global warming is perceived as more and more of a crisis, people 
are telling us: Do something about energy efficiency. Why are we 
emitting greenhouse gas emissions into the air when we can be a much 
more energy-efficient country?
  On and on it goes. The American people are hurting, and they want us 
to address their problems.
  The other point that needs to be made is that when we talk about the 
financial and economic problems facing this country, it is terribly 
important to take an overview of what is going on in the economy in 
general. There is no debate about this: The middle class in America 
today is disappearing. Median family income today is less than it was 
24 years ago. Despite all of the increase in productivity and 
technology, median family income is less today than it was 24 years 
ago. That is rather extraordinary.
  We have 46.5 million people in this country living in poverty--more 
than at any time in the history of this country; 22.5 percent of our 
kids live in poverty. That is the highest rate of childhood poverty in 
the industrialized world. Poverty among senior citizens is increasing. 
So we have major economic challenges that we face.
  Our Republican friends, who a few days ago were telling us they had 
to shut down the government and threaten not to pay our bills because 
of the horrors of ObamaCare, now apparently are no longer concerned 
about ObamaCare, and they are now concerned about the national debt and 
they are concerned about our spending.
  Well, this is what I want to say: If we want to have a conversation 
or a conference or a discussion or a special committee--call it 
whatever you want--we cannot just look at cutting Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid, as Congressman Ryan and many others want. We 
have to put into that discussion how it happens that one out of four 
major corporations in this country does not pay a nickel in Federal 
income taxes.
  Do you think that should be part of the discussion? I think it should 
be. We have to put into that discussion how it happens that corporate 
America is putting their money in the Cayman Islands and in other tax 
havens and avoiding paying tens and tens of billions of dollars in 
Federal taxes. Do we need that in the discussion? I think we do. If you 
are going to talk about a conference on the economy, the conference 
must include the need to create millions of jobs, it must include the 
need to raise the minimum wage, it must include pay equity so that 
women get the same wages men get for the work they are doing, and it 
must include rebuilding our infrastructure.
  This discussion on the economy cannot simply happen on Republican 
terms. We live in a country in which the middle class is in rapid 
decline while the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are 
doing phenomenally well. Any discussion we have--after we reopen the 
government, after we pay our bills--has to include that important 
reality. We cannot and we must not--for moral and economic reasons--
balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, 
and low-income people. The wealthiest people and the largest 
corporations have to get involved, have to pay their fair share of 
taxes, and we have to create the millions of jobs this country 
desperately needs.
  As I see the constantly changing agenda on the part of my Republican 
colleagues as to why they have shut down the government, I want to make 
it clear that the first thing that has to happen is they have to 
understand this government has to be reopened, and it has to be 
reopened with a strong budget that lasts for the rest of this fiscal 
year. And we have to pay our debts so this country and the entire 
global economy does not descend into financial chaos. We have to do 
that, and if Mr. Boehner were to give the Members of the House of 
Representatives a vote on that issue today, I expect it would win.

[[Page 15673]]

  But as we go forward and we discuss broader issues, as we should, the 
agenda cannot simply be the agenda of the Republican candidates for 
President and Vice President who lost by 5 million votes. The agenda 
has to be what the American people want, and that is expanding the 
middle class, creating jobs, raising wages, rebuilding our 
infrastructure, pay equity, and making college affordable. Those are 
the issues that have to be on the agenda as well.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                             The Farm Bill

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, my friends in Vermont watch what is going 
on, and it is hard to explain it to them--especially people who are 
hard working, who rely one way or the other on government programs and 
they do not come through.
  It was in the press today about the polls, saying how angry people 
are at the small group in the other body who has held things up. And I 
understand that. It is probably difficult for those people, who work 
hard every single day, pay their bills, trust in their government, and 
then see what is happening.
  I appreciated the meeting with the President yesterday. The 
distinguished Presiding Officer was there. I know how much President 
Obama wants to have the shutdown end, have people go back to work, have 
the United States pay its bills. And I agree with him. I think the vast 
majority of Americans agree with him. Now he has to get a tiny minority 
in the Congress to agree with him. It is unfortunate--it is 
unfortunate--that they do not because ultimately we should be serving 
the best interests of our country, not what might work at a tea party 
rally or a fundraiser to get one's face on television.
  I will give an example. When September 30 came and went, it was not 
just the Federal Government that shut down. The farm bill extension 
also expired. I can speak to this with some sense of knowledge of how 
that works. I have been able to serve on the Senate Agriculture 
Committee for 38 years. I have served as the chair of it. We have a 
superb chair now in Debbie Stabenow. But I have seen both Republicans 
and Democrats in that committee traditionally over the years come 
together, work closely together.
  I think of two people who were nominees of their parties for 
President who were miles apart in political philosophy--Senator George 
McGovern, a Democrat, and Senator Bob Dole, a Republican; one a liberal 
Democrat, the other a conservative Republican--but on the farm bill, on 
the nutrition programs, they worked closely together for what was best 
for America, what was best for the country.
  We passed an excellent farm bill, a bipartisan farm bill in this 
body, in the Senate. But because the other body would not take it up 
and either pass it or vote to improve it, the farm bill extension 
expired. This one-two punch of political reality is needlessly harming 
our Nation. It is leaving farmers with great uncertainty about the 
future of vital farm programs, all the while with no staff at USDA to 
answer farmers' questions.
  I know the distinguished Presiding Officer has a lot of agriculture 
in his State. His State is much larger than mine. But we also have a 
lot of agriculture in the State of Vermont.
  There is a basic essential responsibility of Congress to fund the 
government. Why has that been ignored? Regular business is replaced by 
bumper-sticker politics. This shutdown is and was entirely avoidable. 
It is perpetuated by the reckless leadership of the House that is 
willing to imperil the economy and negatively impact every single 
American family.
  They are not asking for compromise. Compromise has already happened 
here in the Senate. We conceded to the House terms. We adopted and 
leader Harry Reid had to fight to get the votes to give the House what 
they had asked for by adopting an appropriations bill at the funding 
level the House wanted, which maintains sequestration.
  But even though he had been told by the House leadership that would 
get us back, that would have the government stay open, after we did it 
they said: Oops, we changed our mind. They moved the goalposts again.
  You cannot run government like that. That is by whim. That is not by 
commitment. That is by changing your views by the moment. It is not by 
keeping your word. Anyone claiming that the Senate has been unwilling 
to compromise has conveniently ignored the fact that the Senate came 
forward and passed a continuing resolution at the level the House 
requested.
  So I, like the American people, certainly like my fellow Vermonters, 
am tired of having a political process obstructed. It is time to reopen 
the government for business. Stop the silly season. Stop the games. 
Stop rushing to the TV cameras to get your face on there and say: I am 
the only person serving America, as I try to destroy America.
  Let's reopen. For the farmers in Vermont who have found their local 
USDA office dark, they know the shutdown is even more troubling, 
because it has diverted attention from the now-expired farm bill. This 
manufactured crisis is making it next to impossible to reach compromise 
on this important agriculture, rural development, and nutrition 
legislation.
  The bipartisan Senate farm bill would provide $25 billion in savings. 
This is a bill both Republicans and Democrats voted for in the 
Agriculture Committee and on this floor--$25 billion in savings that 
could be applied toward reducing the federal deficit.
  But no; instead, the House forced us into the shutdown, which is 
costing the Federal Government hundreds of millions of dollars a day, 
$1.6 billion a week, for nothing. So they can go on television and say: 
Look at us. Rally to us because we are standing up for America.
  No, you are costing American taxpayers $1.6 billion a week. That is 
straight to the taxpayers. But more and more of the damage of the 
government shutdown is spreading across the Nation. In every city and 
every community, with each passing day, the State governments, local 
governments feel the pinch and may go bankrupt.
  We heard last week that the CME Group, the world's largest futures 
exchange, informed their customers that the shutdown and USDA furloughs 
could affect dairy and livestock contracts. While much of Wall Street 
is worried they will not have the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment 
numbers this month, on Main Street and our Nation's farms, our 
agriculture businesses, the concerns are growing about missing 
agriculture pricing information that impacts dairy and livestock 
futures contracts and options for milk, cheese, butter, and other dairy 
products. That may sound esoteric to some, but if you are one of those 
farmers who gets up before dawn, works hard all day long, until after 
dark, 7 days a week, paying your bills, paying your mortgage, being an 
integral part of the community, this is real. The farmers are doing 
their work and their job. We ought to do ours.
  Let me give you an example of the uncertainty the shutdown is 
imposing on farmers and businesses from coast to coast. Vermont's own 
Cabot Creamery Cooperative, which makes some of Vermont's award-winning 
cheeses, could be hit by the missing pricing information. In recent 
years, Cabot, being good business people, has increased the use of 
futures contracts as an active part of its risk management effort. It 
makes sense. We have seen many farmers and food companies and dairy 
cooperatives across the country do the same after the disastrous 
collapse in milk prices in 2009.
  But the USDA staff is furloughed, and farmers and businesses like 
Cabot can no longer have a daily or weekly report of cash prices for 
agriculture products. These are the benchmarks of these futures 
contracts that are used

[[Page 15674]]

to hedge against risk and big price swings.
  To make matters worse, the entire USDA Web site is shut down, keeping 
farmers from seeing and using previous agriculture reports from the 
agency. These are the same people who are working long hours. They are 
obeying the rules. They are doing what is expected of them. But 
suddenly they are having their legs taken out from under them.
  I have heard from the Vermont Economic Development Authority. We call 
it VEDA. It is Vermont's statewide economic development finance lender. 
They are focused on supporting Vermont industrial, commercial, and 
agriculture enterprises. Nearly their entire agricultural portfolio, 
$70 million--probably not much in some States, but a lot in my little 
State--intersects in some way with USDA. Their ability to service 
current loans and work on new agriculture loans is quickly freezing up. 
The list is growing for the number of customers that are going to be 
locked out in the cold because the shutdown is quickly causing the 
whole agricultural lending scene to seize up.
  I am hearing from our apple growers in Vermont. We have a very short 
harvest this time of the year in Vermont. Fall harvest, and then it 
snows. They are in the middle of a fantastic, long-awaited harvest. 
They have to keep one eye on the weather forecast on how their crops 
are doing, and the other on the Department of Labor to ensure that 
their apple harvest workforce, which is a seasonal workforce, will 
actually be there.
  Many of our farms use the Federal H-2A temporary worker program. I am 
starting to hear a litany of problems due to the tea party shutdown of 
the Federal Government. Farmers are unable to get their workers 
required Social Security numbers, because the Social Security 
Administration is not issuing new numbers and cards during the 
shutdown--during the tea party shutdown.
  These farmers are Republicans, Democrats, Independents. They do not 
want to play politics. They want to play by the rules. They cannot 
understand why the tea party is playing politics with their business. 
It is resulting in farmers needing to pay huge amounts of backup 
withholding taxes, which they otherwise would not need to do if their 
workers would be able to acquire Social Security numbers.
  Farmers needing new H-2A workers are being stymied in the application 
process since the Department of Labor is not administering the 
necessary parts of that process thanks to the artificial, made-in-
Congress, tea party shutdown. The ripple effects of the shutdown are 
spreading ominously outward across Vermont and every other State.
  I spoke about one aspect of agriculture. My colleagues represent all 
parts of this country and could talk about a whole lot of other aspects 
of agriculture. That is just one multi-multi-multibillion dollar 
industry across this country that is being hurt and ultimately being 
devastated. Some will go out of business, all because of the tea party 
shutdown.
  All these problems could be solved right now. They can be solved this 
afternoon. So let's stop this shameful politicking. The House should 
end the shutdown. Vote on the Senate-passed continuing resolution. 
After all, it has the numbers the House asked for. All they have to do 
is keep their word. We in the Senate did. Now it is time for them to.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Mr. President, there are two issues wrapped together 
right now that are causing dire consequences for people all across the 
country. The first, as we know and as we have been debating, is the 
government shutdown and all that has happened in terms of people being 
hurt, jobs being lost, small businesses not being able to get the loans 
they need, people not being able to complete their mortgage 
requirements to get the homes they want, the concerns about health and 
safety and all of the other issues, children, what is happening to so 
many people, senior citizens, veterans, and so on--very, very serious.
  This is the 11th day of the government shutdown that is costing us 
jobs, slowing the economy, and hurting families all across the country. 
It is an absolute drag on the economy, on our markets and on, frankly, 
America's standing in the world, which we should all be concerned about 
right now.
  It is, frankly, an embarrassment that in the greatest, wealthiest 
country in the world our government is shut down while a small minority 
tries to score political points. Unfortunately, that is what has been 
happening.
  The second issue is also very important; that is, the lapse of a farm 
bill, the agriculture and food policy bill in this country. The farm 
bill has been actually expired for 376 days--376 days--because it ended 
on September 30 of 2012.
  Last January there was a partial extension that extended subsidies 
that we all said should be eliminated as it did not include reforms and 
did not include deficit reduction, but there was a partial extension 
until September 30 and that has also lapsed.
  I know the distinguished Presiding Officer from Indiana, who is a 
member of my committee, fights very hard for Indiana. I am grateful he 
is a member of our committee. I know the Senator understands and shares 
my tremendous concern and urgency, both about the government shutdown 
and that we are seeing agricultural programs and rural economic 
development shut down because we don't have a farm bill.
  Nowhere is this felt more strongly now than in South Dakota. The 
Presiding Officer and I are not from South Dakota, but we have 
colleagues in the Senate who have been speaking on the floor. I have 
talked to the Senators from South Dakota who are deeply concerned, as 
well as the Senators from North Dakota.
  In South Dakota last Friday, October 4, an early autumn blizzard 
killed an estimated 75,000 head of cattle. This is one of the many 
pictures of what is happening as a result of this blizzard. Many 
producers lost half of their entire herd. Keep in mind that many 
thousands of these cows would have produced calves in the spring. These 
losses are huge for ranchers and families and will be felt for many 
years to come. These cattle ranchers and their families have no safety 
net, zero safety net. They don't receive direct payment subsidies. They 
now have zero safety net. They only had livestock disaster plans which 
expired on October 1, 2011, 741 days ago. Their losses are expected to 
reach into the tens of millions of dollars.
  Our Senate farm bill, which we passed with strong bipartisan 
majorities last year and this year--we have actually done it twice--
includes permanent livestock disaster assistance for these ranchers' 
families to make sure ranchers, such as those in South Dakota, don't go 
bankrupt, which is what is going to happen if we don't get this farm 
bill in place as soon as possible.
  But there is no farm bill. Even if there were, those farmers wouldn't 
be able to get help because the farmers can't document their losses or 
get the answers they need from the Farm Service Agency offices because 
they are closed due to the shutdown.
  These ranchers, such as many other ranchers across the country, are 
getting a one-two punch by not being able to go to their local FSA 
office to get the help they need, while at the same time not having the 
long-term certainty of agricultural policy and a safety net when there 
is a catastrophe.
  Three things have come together to make this a major disaster for 
ranchers, such as the need for a farm bill with livestock disaster 
assistance, which we have. We have a great livestock disaster 
assistance program in our bill.
  The good news is the House has one as well. If we can get a farm bill 
done,

[[Page 15675]]

which could be done any day--we are willing to be a part of any 
agreement anyone does--and we will be able to help those South Dakota 
ranchers. Of the three items, one is that we don't yet have the final 
farm bill, even though the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, has done its 
job twice.
  Secondly, we have a government shutdown that is not allowing these 
ranchers to get the help they need.
  Thirdly, we have a blizzard.
  Two out of three of these are self-inflicted. Think about it. Because 
there is no farm bill, because there is a government shutdown, 
somewhere ranchers are going to lose everything--their homes, their 
land, everything--because of the freak blizzard in early October. We 
can debate the larger issues around that as well.
  The irony is those ranchers in South Dakota have 3 days under the law 
to dispose of their dead cattle. They were just hit by blizzard, 
suffered unbelievable losses, and they have 3 days to clean it up. They 
don't get an extension. They can't kick the can down the road. They 
can't wait forever either. They can't wait any longer for us to get a 
farm bill done. This needs to be done right now. If there is the 
political will to do it and there is support from the Speaker to do it, 
we can get this done quickly.
  Those cattle ranchers aren't alone. Producers in the Midwest, the 
Northwest, the West, and much of the South went through one of the 
worst droughts in a generation last summer. Many producers sold off 
most of their herds because there wasn't the grass for the cattle to 
graze on. Feed was scarce and expensive. As a result, cattle 
inventories dropped to their lowest levels in five decades, 50 years. 
For all of us who enjoy eating meat, we are seeing the consequences of 
the lowest level in five decades. Farmers all across the country 
suffered from this drought. In addition, fruit growers from my State 
suffered heavy losses last year from an early spring followed by a late 
frost, and our cherry growers were some of the hardest hit. In fact, 
they were virtually wiped out. Their crop was wiped out last year. They 
also don't have a safety net. Similar to ranchers, they aren't eligible 
for direct payment subsidies and they weren't able to get any crop 
insurance either.
  We worked hard in this farm bill to make sure there were risk 
management tools, not only subsidies because a farmer grows something. 
As taxpayers, we can't afford to do that. It is not the right thing to 
do. We have a deficit we have to address, and it makes no sense. We 
work hard to make sure the risk management tools are available to help 
farmers and ranchers manage their risk when there is a disaster such as 
South Dakota, but there is no help until we get the farm bill signed 
into law.
  For all the men and women, all the families--and the vast majority we 
are talking about are middle-class families--small farmers, medium-
sized farmers who are working hard from sunrise to sunset, day-in and 
day-out with the riskiest business in the world, they can't kick the 
can down the road. When the crop is ready to be harvested, they have to 
do it.
  They are looking at us and saying: Get the job done. Get the farm 
bill done now.
  All of those middle-class families and 16 million people in this 
country have jobs because of agriculture. They are saying we have 
waited long enough. How many disasters have to happen without the right 
tools before this gets done? With 16 million people, the biggest bill 
we are going to pass this year is the farm bill. This is for rural 
economic development, energy, food-related industries, conservation 
efforts, our help for people who are caught up in their own personal 
economic disasters, which is so critical, and they are all counting on 
us.
  The men and women who are working hard to bring in the harvest are 
counting on us to get this done. We did a farm bill. I am grateful to 
leaders on both sides of the aisle who came together. That is how I 
know we can stop this shutdown and pay our bills because we have done 
things together in the Senate. We need our colleagues in the House to 
be willing to step in and do the same.
  People have waited long enough. It is time to get it done, and it is 
time to get it done now.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Reed). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I have been on this floor many times over 
the past 2\1/2\ years, and here we are again, talking about yet another 
fiscal cliff, another drama, another soap opera playing out before us.
  The American people are wondering what in the world is going on down 
there in Washington? How come we can't get resolution to some of these 
problems? Why can't we remove the dark cloud of uncertainty about the 
fiscal future of this country? It is stifling economic growth.
  We are growing at an anemic 4-to-5-year rate of less than 1 percent. 
That does not put people back to work. That does not solve our 
unemployment problem. It only makes it worse. That does not revive an 
economy. Even with all the new discoveries in energy and the lower cost 
of manufacturing and more competitiveness, we have not revived the 
economy for the American people--whether they have just graduated from 
school with a degree and can't find a job except at maybe a fast-food 
restaurant, or whether they are a middle-aged man or woman who had 
their hours cut back, or they have been laid off; whether it is a 
family trying to save for their children's education--people are 
hurting all the way up and down the line and it is frustrating. It is 
frustrating for all of us.
  It is particularly frustrating for the people I represent in Indiana, 
and I think for all Americans, to watch the dysfunction taking place in 
Washington, this inability to come together to find a solution to our 
problems, and this careening from cliff to cliff, debt crisis to debt 
crisis; with people on edge and markets on edge, up 300 1 day and down 
250 the next, waiting for any glimmer of hope for some solution--or, 
reacting with gloom and doom if we fail to come forward with a 
solution.
  Now we have a government shutdown; now the clock is ticking toward 
the debt limit expiration, and we have not yet come to any resolution 
or solution to these problems. People are sick and tired of this broken 
process here in Washington, DC. I am sick and tired of it. My 
colleagues are sick and tired of it. Yet we have not been able to find 
a solution that addresses the problem.
  Republicans just came from a constructive 2-hour meeting at the White 
House with the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of 
Treasury. It is a step forward. It is not a Neil Armstrong step forward 
because it is not a giant leap for mankind. It is a baby step forward. 
And it is an important first step forward because unless you come to 
the table to negotiate, unless you are willing to open up where you are 
in the same room together sharing your concepts, your thoughts, and 
your concerns, you can't even begin to find a solution. So this was a 
step in the right direction.
  The President met with House Republican Members yesterday and Senate 
Republican Members today. Our meeting was candid and transparent. Most 
everybody was able to say what was on their mind and talk about 
possible solutions.
  I wish I could say we walked out and stood together, as has been done 
before in solving these types of problems between Presidents and 
Members of the leadership in both the House and the Senate. I wish I 
could say we were able to do that, but we weren't. But going from ``I 
will not negotiate, period, don't even bother to even think about it,'' 
to, ``Let's sit down and at least talk this through and see if we can 
come to a resolution'' is a step forward. So I take some hope from 
that.
  I made the decision in early 2010 to come back to the Senate to try 
and

[[Page 15676]]

solve what I thought were some of the most fundamental issues affecting 
the future of this country that perhaps we faced in a long time; 
namely, this continued deficit spending and plunge into debt, this 
accumulation of a debt that is so jeopardizing our future and our 
children's future and the future of America.
  The passage of ObamaCare by one party without any bipartisan support, 
jammed through the Congress by a waiver of the rules, has turned into a 
nightmare--a nightmare of implementation. It is part of the fiscal 
problem. I didn't come here today to necessarily talk about that. I 
have been here before talking many times about what I think we need to 
do to address our health care problems--clearly in a different way than 
the Affordable Care Act.
  We see unfolding before our eyes yet another dysfunctional piece of 
legislation that can't even be implemented, even though the party that 
passed this law has had 3\1/2\ years to implement it. We hit the 
October 1 date when people can start to enroll, and the systems aren't 
even up and ready. Now if this law had been in effect for 3 or 6 
months, we could say they rushed it. It has been 3\1/2\ years--actually 
3\3/4\ years, and they still don't have it right. There still are major 
questions. This is an issue we must continue to deal with. We haven't 
been successful so far because we have not gotten any bipartisan 
support to make any significant reforms. That is part of our fiscal 
issue, and that fiscal issue is eating up the promise of America which 
has been given to every generation in the history of this country, and 
stands ready to be denied to the next generation and succeeding 
generations because of our inability to summon the political will to do 
what we all know we need to do.
  We cannot keep spending more than we take in. We cannot keep 
borrowing money to cover that difference. We have seen in just the last 
4\1/2\ years of this administration a staggering increase in the amount 
of debt we have accumulated--from just a little over $10 trillion to 
now $17 trillion in the space of one administration, with 3 more years 
to go. It is unsustainable. I doubt there is a Member of this body--
Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative--who could simply 
ignore it and say this is not a problem. It is a huge problem. Every 
day, every week, every month, every year we postpone it, the problem 
becomes worse.
  We have made effort after effort--bipartisan effort, Simpson-Bowles, 
Domenici-Rivlin, laying out plans as to how to address this over a 
period of time to put us on a path to solvency, the Gang of 6, all the 
efforts of a Republican, Saxby Chambliss, and a Democrat, Mark Warner, 
and those of us who supported those efforts to try to find a way to 
solve this problem, the supercommittee, the dinner group which I was 
part of, substantive discussions with the White House, with the Chief 
of Staff, with the President himself over a 7-month period of time--we 
have been unable to reach a resolution, unable to even come to the 
conclusion that this problem is so great it needs to be dealt with now, 
not pushed down later for some other administration. It has been too 
many Congresses and too many administrations simply saying, ``We can't 
get it done.'' We will have to push it off for yet another term, yet 
another election, yet another President.
  Well, time is running out. So despite all these efforts, we have 
failed. In my opinion, and I think in the opinion of most, the reason 
why we have failed is because we have not had Presidential leadership. 
The kinds of changes that are needed to address a problem this large, 
to bring parties together, to put us in the position where we are 
willing to risk our careers, willing to stand up and do what is right 
for America regardless of the political consequences, willing to stand 
together--Republican and Democrat--to basically say this problem 
transcends politics, and not use it against each other, but stand 
together and say this problem is of such magnitude that we have to 
stand together and have the will to go forward--that can only be 
accomplished, and only has been accomplished if you look to past 
history, by Presidential leadership.
  I was privileged to be here as a Member of the House of 
Representatives when we faced not as great a problem, but still a 
significant a problem with entitlement spending--in this case Social 
Security. The trust fund was running dry. The case was made to the 
American people. A Republican President reached out to a Democrat 
Speaker of the House of Representatives--a divided government, 
Democrats in one House, Republicans in the other--reached out and said, 
We have a problem and it can only be solved if the two of us stand 
together in a bipartisan way. And that they did. It wasn't easy, but it 
was successful, and through it we made a substantial, meaningful change 
to our Social Security system, which bought about 35 years from 
insolvency.
  Now we face an even more dire crisis than that, but the solution will 
be the same--and that is, we need to have Presidential leadership.
  I have proposed a number of things. It looks as though we are going 
to be limited. I did not get any indication from the President that he 
is willing to take these kinds of risks to so-called go big.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 more minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am not going to wait to speak, but if I 
might ask the distinguished Senator from Indiana a question, and then 
certainly agree to however much time he wants.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. COATS. I would be happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. NELSON. The Senator from Indiana is very sincere as he has worked 
diligently and in a bipartisan way to tackle this budget problem. It is 
this Senator's hope we can continue those kinds of discussions we had a 
couple of years ago.
  Would the Senator agree that the shutdown situation we find ourselves 
in, however--which started for a different reason than the budget 
questions. It started for the reason of people wanting to defund 
ObamaCare--that the shutdown creates a crisis atmosphere in which it is 
very difficult to have those budgetary discussions the Senator yearns 
to have, as does his colleague from Florida?
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I answer to my friend from Florida, who did 
work with a group of us, Democrats and Republicans, in past efforts to 
address the larger question which I am addressing, I know he is as 
disappointed as I am that we were not able to come to a resolution.
  Republicans do not want a shutdown. We want a solution. We have found 
in the past that the leverage of a financial situation often gives us 
the opportunity to raise the issues and hopefully reach at least a 
partial solution. That has happened in the past.
  I stand with those who simply say: I want to find a solution to the 
larger problem, including the shutdown of the government. I was 
focusing my efforts on the debt limit we are reaching because it is 
very hard to make a case for asking the American people for yet another 
trillion dollars of debt loaded on their shoulders without some efforts 
to address why this debt is being accumulated and why it continues to 
go forward. Why has the Congress not stepped up to address this 
spending?
  It is like having a credit card and the bank calls and says you have 
hit your limit. You have asked us several times in the past to raise 
that limit, and we have done so, but you keep reaching the limit and 
you keep asking for more credit. At what point are you going to amend 
your reckless spending so you do not have to keep coming in here and so 
we do not have to keep giving you more credit? How do we know you are 
ever going to pay this back? How do we know you are not just going to 
declare bankruptcy and insolvency because you have simply hit the point 
where you do not have the means to pay this back? We might be willing 
to give you some increase in your credit, but first you have to give us 
something back; that is, you have to get off your addition to spending 
that keeps driving you into this situation.

[[Page 15677]]

  What I was trying to address here is, yes, a solution to get this 
government back to work combined, hopefully, with a renewed effort--by 
the Senator from Florida, myself, and others--to strip out the 
unnecessary spending, the duplication, the egregious misuse of 
taxpayers' dollars for nonessential functions of this Federal 
Government.
  There is no disagreement between us that we need to fund our national 
security. There is no disagreement about some of the essential cancer 
research and a number of other things this government engages in that 
cannot be handled at the State level, cannot be handled at a private 
level, substantially. But there is a lot of concern about excessive 
spending that continues to push us more and more into debt.
  In answer to the question from my friend, Republicans do not like 
this shutdown any more than Democrats. We want to have some solution to 
the underlying problem. The underlying problem is the merger of not 
only excessive spending but the debt limit that is the result of that 
spending.
  I know my time is rapidly running out, down to zero here. Let me 
conclude by saying I believe we have a duty--a duty to the American 
taxpayer but beyond that a duty to the future of this country, which is 
not just our children and grandchildren but everybody's children and 
grandchildren, all the generations to come. We have a duty and a moral 
responsibility not to so laden them with debt that they will not have 
the opportunities many of us enjoyed, simple opportunities of owning a 
home, saving money for our kids so we can give them a good education, 
getting the bills paid on time, and living the American dream. That is 
not to become a millionaire or billionaire--maybe for some, but for 
most, to live just a quiet, normal, peaceful life, passing on those 
values and giving our children those opportunities we have found for 
ourselves.
  I suggest that until we summon the political will to do so and until, 
frankly, we have a President who has that same will, we will not solve 
that problem.
  I will conclude with this. It is a story--maybe you heard it before. 
A man walks into the doctor's office and says: I don't feel well at 
all.
  The doctor gives him all the tests and all the exams and calls him 
back in and says: The disease you have is terminal. It is going to kill 
you. There are two ways to address this. There is a cure. It has some 
pain attached to it. You cannot just ignore it. But if you will agree 
to this medicine we are going to give you and these procedures, we can 
save your life. If you are not willing to do that, if you do not have 
the will to go through that process to get yourself back to health, 
there is another alternative. The alternative is that we can transplant 
that disease into your children and into your grandchildren and then 
let them deal with it.
  That is exactly what we are doing here by not having the will, 
summoning the will to do the things we all know need to be done to 
prevent this country from becoming insolvent, from denying and 
destroying the American dream. The future of this country rests with 
our decisions. To date we have not made those decisions.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I see the great junior Senator from 
Virginia waiting to speak. I would like to make a quick statement.
  I again want to remind the Senate and anybody who is listening what 
brought about the shutdown. It has been going on now for a week and a 
half, and we do not see any relief in sight. What started the whole 
thing on the shutdown is this: Shut down the government unless you 
agree to reverse a law that was passed and declared constitutional by 
the Supreme Court. By reversing that law, by taking the funding away 
from the Affordable Care Act--that is what started this a week and a 
half ago.
  I have just come from the commerce committee, where Senator 
Rockefeller had a hearing on everything from consumer finance and the 
consumer federation on how consumers are not being protected; 
everything from the National Transportation Safety Board and how all of 
these accidents that have occurred within the last week and a half of 
the shutdown cannot be investigated because all of their staff is on 
furlough; to the aerospace industry--they cannot deliver airplanes that 
are ready for delivery because they have to have their final FAA 
certificate; to, of course, the space program in NASA, and 97 percent 
furloughed; to over 60 percent of NOAA furloughed and all of the 
weather satellites we are trying to get going. Then you take all these 
government employees who are furloughed, and what about all the 
contractors to the government who are now laying off all the 
contractors?
  We had an Alaskan captain talking about how he needs the government 
certificates so he can go to sea on the Alaskan crab catch. He cannot 
get that. Guess who is lurking out there. Russian captains, to come in 
and start supplying the world market, including the domestic U.S. 
market, with crab. You can go through the whole thing.
  Then, of course, the other side says, in the midst of the shutdown, 
with the default of the credit rating of the government facing us, you 
are not negotiating.
  That reminds me of a story. Two people are talking.
  One says: Can I burn your House down?
  No.
  Can I burn your second floor down?
  No.
  Garage?
  No.
  How about your utility room?
  No.
  Oh, you won't compromise.
  You cannot compromise over something that is hurting so many people's 
lives and is threatening the security and safety of people's lives. You 
cannot compromise on that. You cannot compromise on this Nation going 
into financial default.
  Come on. Let's use a little common sense and get back into government 
functioning again and stop the nonsense about threatening a default of 
this country. Then let's do what the very sincere Senator from Indiana 
said. Let's continue those discussions about what we can do for the 
long-term financial integrity of this country.
  I yield. I thank the Senator from Virginia for his indulgence.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to deliver a status report on what 
the government shutdown has meant to Virginia this week. I gave one 
last week, and I am back on the floor to share some additional news.
  I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Florida. I 
will talk about some similar effects. These effects are felt 
everywhere. It is not just furloughed employees; it is contractors, it 
is local communities and nonprofits, and it is the housing market.
  Let me talk a bit about Virginia. Some of the pages might have been 
on the floor last week when I talked about a tiny community in 
Virginia, Chincoteague, which is a barrier island off the eastern shore 
of Virginia. It is not the place you might think of when you think 
about where Federal shutdown effects would be felt in a very specific 
way. But Chincoteague's economy is oriented around tourism. There is a 
national seashore and national wildlife refuge there, adjacent to 
Chincoteague Island, and so these few thousand people over the years 
have built up an economy that is hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery 
stores, drive-ins, and other shops for visitors. The fall is a very 
busy time. The island gets about 1.5 million visitors a year, and they 
are coming to the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Seashore.
  On October 1, when government closed down the seashore and wildlife 
refuge closed down, the visitors have stopped coming. All those 
businesses, all those small mom-and-pops--I can see the faces of Tommy 
and Donna, and Jack Tarr, who is the mayor, and Glenn and Jane, my 
friends over there--they have called me to say: We are hit so hard 
because this is a busy time for us and we are closed down.

[[Page 15678]]

  Last weekend there was a huge festival. There is a historic 
lighthouse on the island, and they have been working for 6 years to 
restore it. The opening was last week, and they were expecting hundreds 
or even thousands of visitors. They had to cancel it because it is on 
the wildlife refuge.
  This weekend there was another big festival. Some of you might have 
read the book ``Misty of Chincoteague,'' which is about the 
Chincoteague Island ponies. Children read this book about ponies, 
probably ponies that came there from Spain, swim across the sound twice 
a year to Chincoteague, get shots, get inoculated. In the spring, some 
are sold for population control so they do not overrun the island. This 
weekend was the fall pony roundup. They had to cancel it because the 
wildlife refuge is closed.
  It is not just a tourism event. It hurts all the businesses, but it 
is more than that. It is a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department 
that keeps every home and business on Chincoteague Island safe. They do 
not have a fire department other than the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire 
Department. They have two fundraisers a year. This weekend was one of 
them. They have canceled it. The volunteer fire department put up on 
their Web site: ``The fall pony roundup is closed because of the 
childish and idiotic antics of our Government.''
  The other main economy in Chincoteague is NASA. There is a facility 
at Wallops Island, 5 miles away, and over 80 percent of the thousand 
employees and contractors who work at NASA, 5 miles from Chincoteague 
Island, are furloughed.
  So you pull the guts out of the tourism economy, which this community 
relies on, and you pull the guts out of NASA, which the community 
relies on--this community has been devastated by the government 
shutdown, and why? Why?
  Mark Wright is a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army who 
served in the Army for 23 years, including service tours in Iraq--a 
very solid veteran. We are so proud. One out of eight Virginians is a 
veteran--an amazing number of people. When he retired, he got a job at 
the Pentagon as a civilian, a DOD civilian. He got that job earlier 
this year. Mark Wright was furloughed earlier this year because of the 
sequester. He has a wife and two kids in elementary school. He was 
furloughed, days off work, less pay, he got through that furlough. Then 
October 1, furloughed again. So this veteran who served his country, 
put himself in harm's way, and fought in theaters of battle more than 
once has been furloughed twice this year.
  Mark Wright and his wife and children live in an apartment in 
Stafford County--south of DC. They wanted to buy a home for the first 
time in their lives. They are in the housing market. They decided they 
can't buy a home now because he doesn't know if he will have a paycheck 
to make a mortgage payment. He will be lucky enough to keep making the 
rent payment every month. It hurts their family, but it also hurts the 
real estate market in Stafford County.
  Just this week it was reported that foreclosures in Virginia are up 
52 percent from August to September, the biggest jump since the start 
of the recession because of the effect of sequester and these kinds of 
foolish antics, as the volunteer fire department described. So what 
Mark Wright and his family are asking is why; why are we doing this?
  I had an employee roundtable with about seven furloughed employees 
and contractors on Wednesday afternoon in my office. They shared their 
anxieties about their own finances. They shared their own anxieties 
about having kids at home and getting a paycheck and what it would mean 
to them. I said to one participant: Tell me about your family. He said: 
I am lucky. I don't have a family. Then he caught himself and he said: 
I wish I was married and had a family, but for now when I am not 
getting a paycheck and I don't know whether I will get a paycheck, I am 
lucky I don't have a family. This was a DOD civilian who was a West 
Point grad who served as an Active-Duty Army officer for 10 years and 
fought overseas.
  Others talked about how it felt to be kicked around just because they 
are trying to serve their country. One said: I have gone on 
unemployment. I never wanted to go on unemployment, but I have to for 
my family. Even those who were financially secure said: I am looking 
elsewhere for a job. Why would I put myself and my family through this? 
I have other skills. Maybe I can't serve the public anymore if the 
Congress is not going to back me.
  Why are we doing this to these people?
  A Virginia business that I am going to leave nameless called me the 
other day. They have thousands of employees in Virginia. The shutdown 
caused their weekly revenue to fall by 85 percent immediately. They are 
still doing work, and they are still being told--because they are 
contractors--that they will get paid, they are just not told when they 
will get pay. But they are paying for office rent and they are paying 
for utilities and they are paying salaries of employees and they are 
paying monthly health insurance premiums. They don't know when they are 
going to get paid, but they are having to write checks to others every 
day.
  The owner of the business said: A few more weeks of this, and we will 
be bankrupt and hundreds of people will lose their jobs.
  Why are we doing this to these businesses?
  Yesterday the Presiding Officer was with me in a hearing before the 
Armed Services Committee, and a woman by the name of Jo Ann Rooney was 
nominated to be Under Secretary of the Navy. I asked her a question 
about morale in the Navy and the Pentagon now. Her answer was 
interesting.
  Jo Ann Rooney had been working in the Pentagon for quite a while and 
then left 1 year ago to be president of a women's college. So she has 
been away from the Pentagon for 1 year. Now she is back in the Pentagon 
as a nominee to be Under Secretary of the Navy. Her name is pretty 
important in Virginia.
  She said the difference in the Pentagon and with the Navy folks she 
was working with from when she left 1 year ago to today is completely 
stark. In the year that she has been gone, the furloughs hit and now 
the shutdown has hit. She said she is walking around the halls and 
looking at how people are responding. They feel like they are not 
supported when they are doing this important mission. She had one 
question: Why are we doing this to people who are working for the U.S. 
Navy whom we count on to protect us every day. Why?
  We know, as the Senator from Florida said, that the House pushed this 
shutdown through unwillingness to have a budget conference. We passed a 
budget in March. We wanted to sit down and find a budget compromise 
with a very different House budget. We were going to have to compromise 
and do that, but Senators and House Members have blocked a conference. 
With no conference, we don't get a compromise. With no compromise, we 
don't get a budget. With no budget, the government shuts down. They 
pushed this through a shutdown and only after the shutdown have they 
said: All right. Let's talk.
  Yesterday they revealed a new plan in the House. Their plan was we 
need to make sure we don't default on our debt, but after 11 days of 
shutdown, we just want to keep the government shut down. We will make 
sure we pay our foreign creditors, but we want to keep the government 
shut down.
  Why? Why cause this pain? Why hurt the economy? Why push businesses 
to the brink of bankruptcy? Why harm the housing market? Why degrade 
and devalue public servants, especially those who are veterans? Why 
jeopardize cities and towns such as Chincoteague? Why hurt nonprofits 
such as the Chincoteague Island Volunteer Fire Department? Why leave 
families vulnerable to unemployment and force them to go on 
unemployment for the first time in their lives? Why cause all this 
pain?
  No one in this country is benefiting from the U.S. government being 
shut down. So why is the House continuing to insist that this 
government remain closed?

[[Page 15679]]

  I am continually reminded of the words by the Founder of the 
Republican Party 150 years ago at Gettysburg--Abraham Lincoln. At the 
end of that amazing speech, he resolved, and we resolved, that 
government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth, 
not for a year, not for a month, not for a week, not for a day, not for 
an hour, not for a minute, and not for a second.
  Why can't the House agree to open the government and stop all this 
unnecessary pain?
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, tomorrow morning--unless it has otherwise 
changed--we will be voting on the request from the majority leader and 
the President to raise the debt ceiling by more than $1 trillion. It 
will not actually be a dollar figure. It will be suspended for roughly 
1 year--the debt ceiling, that is. So everybody understands what the 
majority leader and the President are asking us to do: America has 
maxed out its credit card. It is about $16.7 trillion.
  I know we talk about millions and billions and trillions as if we 
could actually conceptualize what that means, but here is an 
interesting comparison: Under President Obama--he has been in office 
for about 5 years now--our national debt has gone up $6.1 trillion. The 
debt accrued by all 43 previous Presidents was $10.6 trillion.
  Our national debt is $16.7 trillion, and President Obama has asked to 
raise that credit limit another $1 trillion. Here is the catch: If he 
had a plan to actually deal with how we are going to pay down this 
$16.7 trillion, then maybe there would be a discussion. What he wants 
is what he called a clean debt ceiling, which is a blank check. 
President Obama wants a blank check to continue to borrow more and more 
money--not so we, the present generation, can live up to our 
responsibilities and make sure we are fiscally responsible but, rather, 
to foist that debt off onto the next generation and beyond with 
absolutely no plan in place to repay it.
  We have heard discussions about grand bargains. We were with the 
President this morning. He was kind enough to invite Republicans in the 
Senate over to the White House. He sort of chuckled about the grand 
bargain that he and Speaker Boehner and others have been pursuing over 
the last few years. He likened it to a unicorn. In other words, he 
likened it to a mythical creature no one has actually ever seen. That 
is what the grand bargain is, at least under this administration.
  We reminded the President this morning that none of us wanted a 
government shutdown. This is not what we actually want, and we are all 
eager to end it. We also told the President that now is the time--and 
divided government is perhaps the best time--to end our fiscal crisis 
and to be responsible for the $16.7 trillion and come up with a payment 
plan.
  If you went to the credit card company and said: I want to raise my 
credit card limit another $10,000, they would say what is your plan to 
actually pay down the debt you already accumulated? If you come back to 
us with a plan, then maybe we can talk about raising the limit on your 
credit card.
  As I said, for the 220 years between the start of George Washington's 
Presidency and the end of George W. Bush's Presidency, the Federal 
Government accumulated $10.1 trillion in debt. During the Obama 
Presidency alone, it has been $6.1 trillion. If the President gets his 
way tomorrow in the vote, we are going to have to get a blank check to 
raise it another $1 trillion-plus. It won't be $6.1 trillion; it will 
be $7.1 or $7.2 trillion with no plan to pay down the debt and deal 
with the impact of this growing indebtedness on our economy and on our 
next generation.
  It is important to remember what the President has said about the 
debt. In 2008, when he was a Member of the Senate, he said adding $4 
trillion to the national debt was, in his words, ``irresponsible'' and 
``unpatriotic.'' That was President Obama back in 2008, and here he is 
again asking for a higher debt limit with no plan to repay the $16.7 
trillion or any portion of it.
  President Obama is also the same person who said in 2009: ``I refuse 
to leave our children with a debt they cannot repay.'' He is the same 
person who said in 2010 that America's massive debt ``keeps [him] awake 
at night.'' I can't imagine he is getting much sleep these days if that 
is true.
  This is the same person who in 2011 echoed the comments of the former 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ADM Mike Mullen when he was asked 
what his biggest concern was as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
Admiral Mullen said the greatest long-term threat to America's national 
security is America's debt. President Obama said he agreed with that.
  Finally, President Obama is the same person who in 2012 said he was 
running for reelection ``to pay down the debt in a way that's balanced 
and responsible.''
  The most amazing thing I thought about the meeting we had with the 
President this morning is that he was actually taking credit for a 
reduction in the deficit. Of course, the deficit is different from the 
debt. The deficit is how we measure the amount of money coming into the 
Treasury and how much goes out in a given year. We are now spending 
roughly 16 cents on the dollar of borrowed money; in other words, more 
money than what is coming in.
  The President was actually taking credit for the annual deficit's 
decrease. The deficit can be zero this year, and we would still have 
$16.7 trillion in debt. Those are related but different issues because 
the debt accumulates over many years when you spend more money than you 
have actually coming in.
  In fact, if we look back, the two reasons the deficit has gone down 
this year is because, No. 1, one of the largest tax increases in 
American history that the President demanded in January of this last 
year--that was the fiscal cliff negotiation--and, secondly, it was the 
Budget Control Act and the sequester, which has actually capped 
discretionary spending for the last 2 years. That is what has caused a 
reduction in the deficit, not anything else.
  So now the President said it is no big deal, this debt--$16.7 
trillion is no big deal. And $17 plus trillion is no big deal, either, 
to hear the President say it today.
  Now the President has changed his tune. Earlier he told ``ABC News'': 
We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the 
next 10 years, it is going to be in a sustainable place.
  Well, besides being completely irresponsible and not making decisions 
today but, rather, kicking the can down the road to the next generation 
and beyond, this high debt is having a present-day impact on slow 
economic growth. All we have to do is read the Congressional Budget 
Office reports, which say when the Federal Government borrows this much 
money from foreign governments such as China and elsewhere, that is 
money--the Federal Government is actually competing in the marketplace 
against the private sector for credit and it actually drives down 
private sector investment. With the debt this high, people know 
something is going to happen. Either the Federal Government is going to 
have to cut spending to deal with this debt or the President is going 
to want to raise taxes again, and that is exactly what he has requested 
year after year.
  Speaking of the next 10 years, the President's latest budget 
proposal, which he unveiled in April, would increase our debt by $7.4 
trillion as well as raise taxes by another $1.1 trillion, even though 
the President has raised taxes by $1.7 trillion already.
  There is a reason why our economy is growing so slowly, why the 
private sector is sitting on the sidelines rather than investing and 
creating new jobs. There is a reason why the percentage of people 
active in the workforce is at a 30-year low. That is called the labor 
participation rate. All we have to do is Google the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics and it will tell us what the labor participation rate is. It 
is at a 30-year low.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page 15680]]


  Mr. CORNYN. So not only is the unemployment rate unacceptably high, 
those are people still looking for work. We know more and more people 
are simply giving up because they have quit looking, and they are 
reflected in that smaller percentage of people actually in the 
workforce.
  As we all know, the President has had multiple opportunities to make 
that grand bargain for long-term debt reduction. He has endorsed a 
grand bargain but walked away from his own bipartisan fiscal 
commission, the so-called Simpson-Bowles Commission, in December of 
2010. He might have also endorsed a grand bargain put forward by the 
Bipartisan Policy Center's Domenici-Rivlin Commission, but he walked 
away from that one too.
  President Reagan negotiated with Tip O'Neill. President Bush 41 
negotiated with George Mitchell. President Clinton negotiated with Newt 
Gingrich. President Bush 43 negotiated with Ted Kennedy. That is what 
Presidential leadership requires, and which is so obviously missing in 
this context.
  I hope the President will follow up on this meeting we had this 
morning and begin the kind of negotiations that would provide a payment 
plan to pay off the debt America already owes--by the way, it is not 
just America, it is every man, woman, and child in this country--before 
he comes back here and asks us to raise the credit card limit by 
another $1 trillion.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, yesterday I came to the Senate floor to 
talk about how the government shutdown is affecting North Dakota 
ranchers and farmers, particularly my ranchers who were hit by last 
weekend's storm and lost a vast number of cattle, jeopardizing their 
livelihood for years to come, and aren't getting the help they need 
from the USDA and the Farm Service Agency.
  Today I wish to talk about another devastating consequence of this 
shutdown, and that is the consequence of this shutdown on Indian 
Country in my State, and undoubtedly Indian Country all across this 
Nation.
  In North Dakota we have five Indian reservations which are home to 
many Native-American families. These are communities where economic 
development and many times employment have been trying to get a 
foothold, trying to catch up, and where many of my State's most 
vulnerable individuals live. We have heard a lot and much has been made 
about the United States living up to its obligations, its contract 
obligations, its obligations to the entities that hold our debt, but we 
haven't talked about the United States living up to its treaty 
obligations to Indian tribes in this country. This shutdown poses a 
serious--and I am not exaggerating--a serious threat to the basic 
services the Federal Government provides to Native-American families as 
part of its trust, its contract, its obligation to Native Americans and 
Native-American nations.
  I recently had a discussion with tribal chairs all across North 
Dakota. I was hearing more and more of the kind of horror stories we 
hear when all of a sudden weather is coming and food assistance is 
needed and fuel assistance is needed. I wish to share with this body 
today the stories I heard, because they are telling stories about how 
foolish and how dangerous this government shutdown is to many very 
vulnerable families, particularly vulnerable Native-American families.
  By way of introduction, most of the five tribes in North Dakota are 
direct service tribes, which means BIA itself performs critical 
functions to help Native-American families. So BIA is the place where 
people go to get assistance. With the shutdown, there are few or no BIA 
employees in each reservation to carry out this very important work. 
That means BIA's general assistance programs are no longer able to 
serve, for example, the 600 families on the Turtle Mountain Reservation 
who would otherwise receive an average of $97 per person to meet 
essential needs of food, shelter, and utilities. The food banks and the 
food pantries are overrun. It is not an exaggeration to say this 
shutdown has caused people in the Turtle Mountain Reservation to go 
hungry.
  At the Spirit Lake Nation, something we have heard a lot about in the 
last year is that social services are stretched to the max, where we 
have problems in even a fully funded government; but today the vast 
majority of BIA child social service agencies have stopped, leaving 
children stuck in limbo in the court system, waiting for someone to 
find them a safe and decent home. Some examples: A woman wishing to 
report a sexual abuse of her son has been attempting to contact Child 
Protective Services for over a week now. When she went to the office, 
the doors were shut and the 24-hour on-call person didn't answer the 
phone.
  At the same time, BIA law enforcement is limited--and there is a lot 
of acreage out there that they have to cover--to one officer per shift. 
They are patrolling 252,000 acres with one officer.
  At the Sisseton-Wahpeton Reservation, almost 50 percent of the 
tribe's ongoing budget consists of Federal funds. The tribe is 
preparing to furlough more than 200 employees. Right now, the tribe is 
able to pay them out of carryover funds, but unless the government 
reopens soon, it won't be able to afford to pay these employees and 
they will be furloughed.
  In a couple examples of great tragedy, the Sisseton-Wahpeton 
community recently lost a 3-month-old baby and, because of the 
shutdown, the mother has been turned away for burial assistance for her 
child.
  Gerald Thompson, an elder at Sisseton-Wahpeton and a Vietnam vet--and 
I know on the floor with me is our Senator from South Dakota and he can 
attest to the great number of Native Americans who serve in our 
military, at a much higher rate than almost any other group. Gerald is 
a proud Vietnam vet. He receives a small Federal stipend which is not 
even enough to cover the basic essentials. His stipend is no longer 
available because of the shutdown. His wife is suffering from diabetes 
and stage 3 kidney disease. He worries about not being able to afford 
the gas to drive her to Fargo once a week, and he wonders how he is 
going to buy propane for heat for his family and his home.
  At Indian Health Service facilities, health care workers such as 
those at Standing Rock recognize people still need medical attention, 
so they are still coming to work with no promise of a paycheck and 
probably, some people would argue here, doing so illegally.
  The Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, which is at the epicenter of 
oil and gas development in the Bakken oil shale in North Dakota, will 
see that development slowed. There is always competition for rigs in 
North Dakota. Where are those going to move? Everybody is waiting for 
the rig to show up and begin to drill their wells. The tribes have had 
a tremendous opportunity not only to develop the resource that will 
help them economically, but to develop this resource which is moving us 
in the right direction for energy independence. But because of the 
shutdown, MHA Nation is losing a substantial amount of Federal oil and 
gas revenue. Right now, the tribes aren't able to get energy 
development agreements. They can't get drilling permits approved or 
have environmental impact assessments completed because BLM and EPA are 
shut down and not available. Those rigs will move someplace else. The 
tribe has hundreds of drilling permits awaiting approval and this is 
only going to delay them further.
  The situation is also dire in urban Indian communities. U-Tech, 
United Tribes Technical College, is one of several tribal colleges that 
serves over 600 students trying to better themselves and another 300 
children who attend their K-through-8 elementary school on the college 
campus. But because of the shutdown, they are reducing those education 
services to both the college students and to children.
  The list goes on and on and on. It will only get worse. If we 
continue to not address this problem, we are turning our back on these 
very real needs. But I think also, importantly, we are turning our back 
on an obligation this

[[Page 15681]]

country undertook when it signed treaties with the tribal people of my 
State.
  All across North Dakota, families, workers, children, people who are 
disabled, are losing access to services and assistance and are losing 
their paycheck. Why? Why is this happening? Because Congress, arguably 
the greatest democratic body ever envisioned, is bickering and plagued 
with inaction. House Republicans continue to bring up individual bills 
that only address the issues of the day and programs that have only 
been written about in headlines. Whenever there is a headline, we can 
fund that because we want to say we are responding to those needs. 
Well, I think I need a headline for our Native-American families who 
are in dire straits, and for the Bureau of Indian Education as well as 
BIA. So I ask: What about Native-American families who are unable to 
get critical social services to afford food or housing because BIA is 
closed during the shutdown? Where is the bill for them? Also, equally 
important, where is the public safety for them? Where is the public 
safety for those tribal members?
  What about the ranchers who lost a huge percentage of their herd not 
only in my State in the southwest corner, but also all across West 
River and South Dakota, who can't get assistance from the Department of 
Agriculture? Where is the bill for them?
  What about our young farmers who are trying to build the farms of 
tomorrow and feed our country, who aren't able to receive their income 
checks because the Farm Service Agency is shut down? They can't even 
get their money. Where is the bill for them?
  What about North Dakotans trying to start a small business or get a 
home mortgage and aren't able to access those Federal programs? Where 
is the bill for them?
  It is time we stop this. It is time we respond to the very real hurt 
in America.
  We hear a lot about who is winning and who is losing politically. 
That is a sad day when that is the deliberation we have, because it is 
the American people whom we are here to serve. It is the American 
people to whom we have an obligation. We need to end this impasse and 
to open the government.
  My people in Indian Country in North Dakota need and want and believe 
they have earned that respect and a commitment to their treaty rights.
  Thank you so much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from South Dakota.


                     Livestock Disaster Assistance

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, a week ago today western South Dakota was 
preparing for a coming storm, but no one had any idea it would be one 
of the worst and most devastating snowstorms in that area's history.
  I grew up in western South Dakota. I was born and raised there. We 
saw a lot of nasty blizzards over the years--storms that swept through 
the middle of our State and all across our State, with the destructive 
impact that can have, the way it would close down roads, the difficulty 
it would create for people and, obviously, the loss of livestock that 
comes with that. We have seen over the years blizzards that have taken 
their toll on one of our State's most important industries.
  But the storm damage I saw yesterday when I toured western South 
Dakota was epic, looking at the mountains of branches that were piled 
high waiting for disposal, or the gut-wrenching scenes of fence lines, 
draws, and pastures that were scattered with dead livestock.
  This snowstorm started out as heavy rain--and I know the 
distinguished Presiding Officer had much of this in her State of North 
Dakota as well--but that soaked the livestock. Then it turned into a 
raging blizzard, with heavy snow and sustaining winds of 60 to 70 miles 
an hour. These winds drove livestock for miles--some more than 12 miles 
from their pastures. The fortunate ones lasted through the storm, miles 
from their origination, but still alive.
  As I speak, South Dakota ranchers are still assessing their losses, 
trying to determine ownership of those that survived but are miles away 
from home, and hauling away or burying the tens of thousands of dead 
livestock. To add even more challenges to an already devastating 
situation, this area is now experiencing heavy rains. Flash-flood 
warnings have been issued this morning for areas of the Black Hills, 
with an additional 2 or more inches of rain in the forecast.
  This storm-damaged area of 17 counties in western South Dakota 
contains more than 6,000 ranches and more than a million cattle and 
sheep. For most of these ranchers, their livestock is their sole source 
of livelihood. These ranchers have a 365-day-a-year obligation to care 
for their livestock, which they have done for generation after 
generation.
  Madam President, I want to show you the impact of this storm and what 
it did to some of these livestock. As shown in this picture, this is an 
area we saw from a helicopter yesterday--a low-lying area where there 
was some water. As you can see, there are upwards of 40, 50 head of 
livestock that are lying there dead in that area.
  We saw numerous examples like that yesterday.
  This is another photo we took yesterday of trucks, rendering trucks 
that were coming to pick up some of the dead livestock. As you can see, 
not only are the trucks filled, but there are livestock along this 
road. We saw that situation, that image, over and over yesterday, as 
well, along highways in western South Dakota.
  The point I am simply making is, this was an incredibly powerful 
impact--this storm--that created an enormous amount of damage to the 
No. 1 industry in western South Dakota. The people who work the land, 
the people who raise these animals, they are independent, they are hard 
working. These ranchers are the best friends and neighbors anybody 
could have, all willing to lend a helping hand. They are first to 
provide assistance and the last to seek it.
  The best thing we can do right now, the most effective assistance we 
can offer them right now is found in the livestock disaster section of 
the farm bill, which has passed here in the Senate, is now passed in 
the House of Representatives, and is awaiting action by a conference 
committee.
  The Livestock Indemnity Program, known as LIP, was something Senator 
Baucus and I authored as part of the 2008 farm bill. It provides much-
needed financial assistance to these livestock producers. But in order 
to get this assistance to them, a new farm bill has to be passed.
  This program, the Livestock Indemnity Program, or the LIP program, in 
the farm bill is fully paid for with cuts in other farm programs, and 
it has eliminated the need for ad hoc disaster assistance that was the 
standard emergency assistance in past years.
  I remember past years, when I was a Member of the House of 
Representatives, something like this would happen, and we would have to 
come to Congress for ad hoc disaster assistance, emergency assistance. 
The whole point of getting a disaster title in the farm bill was to 
eliminate the need for that ad hoc disaster assistance on an annual 
basis sometimes.
  So this title was put in the farm bill back in 2008. It created a 
permanent program, paid for. As I said, the one in the farm bill that 
is being considered now is offset by cuts in other areas of the farm 
bill.
  What we are waiting for is for the conferees to get together in a 
conference to work out the differences between the two bills and to 
report them back to the House and to the Senate, where they can be 
voted on, hopefully, passed and put on the President's desk. That is 
what it is going to take to get assistance back to these livestock 
producers, because the existing disaster title, as I said--the 
Livestock Indemnity Program in the disaster title of the farm bill--
expired. It expired at the end of 2011.
  When we passed a bill in the Senate in 2012, it reauthorized it, and 
in the farm bill that passed this year it has been reauthorized. But 
until we get the farm bill passed, that authority that can help 
producers in circumstances like this no longer exists. That is why

[[Page 15682]]

we have to get conferees together in a conference committee and, 
ultimately, a bill on the President's desk that can be signed into law 
that would allow the Department of Agriculture to issue the regulations 
that are necessary to put this program back into effect.
  I have been encouraged by reports I have heard that they are going to 
soon name conferees to move a farm bill forward in the House. I wrote a 
letter earlier this week to Speaker Boehner asking him to name 
conferees so the conference committee could begin its work and make 
this assistance available to livestock producers.
  I have also sent a letter to Secretary Vilsack asking him to 
determine that the Farm Service Agency personnel in the impacted 
counties are essential so they can open these offices and begin the 
process of preparing damage assessment reports that are going to be 
needed for Federal disaster declarations. The distinguished Presiding 
Officer mentioned in her remarks the impact this is having in western 
South Dakota. In western North Dakota, the Farm Service Agency 
personnel are not working, and in this circumstance they are the ones 
to whom the producers would go and the States and affected parties 
would look to to do the damage assessments.
  So I am hoping Secretary Vilsack, who has that authority, 
particularly in this sort of a situation where you have an emergency, 
will declare these people as essential and get them back on the job so 
they can begin those damage assessments and prepare the way for, 
hopefully, when a farm bill passes and the disaster title is authorized 
again.
  So those are a couple of things that have to happen, in my view, 
fairly quickly. And I will be the first to say that I have had concerns 
about the farm bill as it worked its way through the process here. 
There were some things in the commodity title that I thought could have 
been done differently--perhaps a better policy approach and, arguably, 
something that is more compliant with our World Trade Organization 
obligations and less market distorting. There were a number of things 
in the commodity title, there were some things in other titles of the 
bill that we had some concerns with, but there were a number of things 
in the farm bill that we worked very hard to have included, and the 
disaster title was one of those.
  I am hoping as this farm bill works its way through the process, and 
hopefully as conferees get named by the House of Representatives, they 
can begin their work, work out some of those differences, and I will 
continue to be a strong proponent of the livestock disaster assistance 
that was created in the 2008 farm bill and was included in both 
versions of the 2013 farm bill--both the one that passed the House and 
the one that passed the Senate.
  I appreciate the work Chairman Stabenow has done, and our ranking 
member Senator Cochran. I thank them for their tireless efforts to try 
and get a new farm bill enacted as soon as possible.
  This past week's snowstorm is only one example of the urgency behind 
that to get it done so the programs can once again support our farmers 
and ranchers and the millions of others whose jobs rely on agriculture. 
Again, in my State of South Dakota, it is our No. 1 industry. It always 
has been and it probably always will be. We have so many farm and ranch 
families who look to their leadership here in Washington, DC, to 
provide some certainty with regard to the rules they are going to play 
by. When we do extensions such as the one we are in the middle of right 
now--we did a 1-year extension last year of the old farm bill--but we 
do not make the reforms, some of the changes that are necessary to 
update farm policy, then we do not give producers the certainty they 
need as they make their planning decisions for the future. So getting a 
5-year, a multiyear reauthorization in place is important, and it is 
timely.
  My hope would be that in the very near future the conferees can sit 
down, they can work out the differences between the two bills--
reconcile those differences--and get this thing moving again. I say 
that not only because it is critically important to these livestock 
producers in western South Dakota but because it is critically 
important to all producers across South Dakota.
  The farmers in the eastern part of my State, the people in the entire 
farm belt and the regions of this county who depend upon agriculture 
for their existence need to know what the policies are going to be, 
what the results are going to be, so they can plan and plan 
effectively, and so we have the mechanisms in place, so when something 
like this happens--like happened in western South Dakota this past 
week--there is a mechanism in place, there is a way in which we can 
respond and provide support for the hard-working farmers and ranchers 
and the millions of people whose jobs rely on agriculture.
  Looking at those images yesterday was very gripping, in many ways 
very disturbing. As you fly over these areas and you see these massive 
losses of livestock, you realize what that means for the people who are 
out there every single day, who for generations have made their living 
on the land by raising these cattle, and it has contributed in such an 
enormous and significant way to the economy not only of western South 
Dakota but of this entire economy--people who literally every single 
day are out there feeding not only America but feeding the world. 
Agriculture has a tremendous impact domestically, obviously, but it has 
a profound impact around the world, and it is something that from an 
economic standpoint creates thousands and thousands and millions of 
jobs here in this country.
  I hope we can get the farm bill done. I hope the conferees will get 
named soon by the House, and that we will be on our way toward passage 
of a farm bill and, hopefully, the certainty that producers across this 
country need and the ability to respond to this type of emergency.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, we are now in the 11th day of this 
unnecessary government shutdown. Just as my colleague from South 
Dakota, Senator Thune, pointed out, there are some impacts in South 
Dakota as a result of this shutdown. We are seeing those very real 
consequences in New Hampshire as well, and I am sure the Presiding 
Officer is seeing those in North Dakota.
  It has become clear to me by talking to people in New Hampshire that 
the longer the shutdown goes, the worse the impact on families, on 
small businesses, on people who need the services from this government.
  But as difficult as the shutdown is, there is actually another crisis 
that looms on the horizon that would have even more disastrous 
consequences for our economy, and that is the possibility of a first-
ever default on this country's debt.
  For the first time ever, if we default, the country would not pay the 
bills it has incurred--the bills it has incurred because of decisions 
made by this Congress or previous Congresses.
  As economists across the ideological spectrum have warned, the 
consequences of a default would be severe. We could see businesses stop 
hiring. That would have an impact, as we are already seeing as a result 
of this shutdown, on the economic recovery we are experiencing. 
Retirement accounts and families' nest eggs would lose much of their 
value in a very short time. Interest rates would rise, which would mean 
higher costs for consumers, for small businesses, and for the Federal 
Government, as we need to borrow. And consumer confidence, which is so 
important for small businesses and for the economy, would drop sharply.
  Some people have suggested that these are scare tactics. But these 
consequences are very real, and we know that because we have been here 
before. In 2011, which was the last time we came close to defaulting on 
our debt, the mere prospect of that default was enough to have 
significant impact on our economy.
  In late July and early August of 2011, the period that led up to the 
debt deal in 2011, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 
points. As a result American families saw their household wealth 
plummet by $2.4 trillion. We

[[Page 15683]]

saw a sharp drop in consumer confidence, and by the way the current 
circumstances that we are in have seen a similar drop in consumer 
confidence over the concerns about the shutdown and the default.
  In the last few weeks we have seen the biggest drop in consumer 
confidence since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. Then in 2011 our 
credit rating was downgraded for the first time in America's history. 
The crisis in 2011 resulted in $1.3 billion in additional borrowing 
costs for the Federal Government, thereby increasing the Nation's debt.
  So for all of those people who said we are not going to raise the 
debt ceiling, we are not going to pay the bills this country has 
incurred because we are worried about the debt and deficits we face, 
the fact is that action alone increased our debt by $1.3 billion.
  There is no question that we need to get this country's debt and 
deficits under control. I think all of us who are here believe that. 
But the best way to do that is to reach a comprehensive long-term 
bipartisan agreement that looks at all areas of spending, that looks at 
the domestic side of the budget, at the defense side of the budget, at 
mandatory programs and at revenue.
  Despite the partisanship that we have seen too much of here, I still 
think that kind of an agreement is possible and that is critical. 
Senator Thune talked about certainty for farmers who are not sure what 
is going to happen with the farm bill. But that kind of uncertainty is 
going across the economy for businesses, from whatever sector they are 
in, because people do not know what we are going to do here in 
Washington about dealing with this country's long-term budget.
  As some of my colleagues have noted, the response to the financial 
crisis and the great recession led to a higher deficit. There is no 
question the country was in trouble. One of the ways we helped to 
address that was to increase spending on vital safety net programs, 
while revenues declined--to try to stimulate the economy, to put people 
back to work.
  Those policies as well as the fiscal policies that were enacted over 
the past decade, including two wars, tax breaks for the wealthiest 
Americans, all of those things made the country's debt and deficits 
increase. Actually in the last few years we have seen significant 
progress to reduce spending and to narrow our deficit.
  We put in place discretionary spending caps that have reduced 
spending by the Federal Government, and we let the tax cuts for 
wealthiest Americans expire which raised additional revenue. All told, 
we put in place approximately $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction. This 
has not been easy. There has been a lot that has been affected that I 
would not have chosen, but the fact is we are on a more sustainable 
budget path.
  One of the best ways we can improve our budget outlook is by growing 
the economy, by focusing on jobs that boost revenue and decrease the 
need for social programs. While we certainly have more work to do on 
that front, consistent job growth has helped increase revenue and 
reduce our deficit.
  Since this President took office, we have seen this country's deficit 
fall by over 50 percent. That represents a remarkable improvement, and 
all that is coming with the financial crisis and the recession that 
began in 2008. So just think about that. We have reduced this country's 
deficit by over 50 percent.
  The Congressional Budget Office projects that our deficit will drop 
to 2.1 percent of GDP by 2023 from its current level of 4.2 percent. We 
have made great progress, and we are on a path to make even better 
progress. The budget that the Senate passed is a very good place to 
look at how we achieved additional savings and how we continue to grow 
our economy.
  That budget would give us an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit 
reduction over the next 10 years. It would also make very important 
investments in our economy, in families in this country, in 
infrastructure, in business, in education. That is a conversation we 
need to have. I think we should go to a conference committee on the 
budget. It has been unfortunate that we have not been able to get 
agreement in this body to do that because we have a small group of 
people who keep preventing that.
  But that is not really what I wanted to talk about this afternoon. 
What we need to do is, we need to get this government back up and 
running. We need to agree that we should pay the bills this country has 
incurred and not default. We are continuing to see, as I said when I 
started, the very real impact of this government shutdown on families 
and small businesses across New Hampshire and the country.
  I talked earlier on the floor about some of the small businesses that 
have been affected in New Hampshire. But today I want to talk about 
some of the Federal employees who are affected. I heard from an 
employee at the Federal Correctional Institution in Berlin, NH. This is 
a medium-security prison. It is new. It has not even been completely 
staffed, and it does not have all of the inmates there yet. This is 
from one of the employees who is currently working there--without pay 
as she points out.
  She told me that her husband had already seen his hours cut at his 
job. Now she says:

       I sit in fear that I will not receive a pay check at all. I 
     will not be able to pay my mortgage payment, my student loan 
     payments, our vehicle payments, or any other debts. I also 
     assume that my daughter's daycare is not going to accept an 
     IOU. I also will not have the money to buy pellets for my 
     stove or fuel for my furnace for the upcoming winter.

  She is worried about the long-term mental and physical well-being of 
those who are working without paychecks at the prison because many of 
her colleagues are living paycheck to paycheck.
  We have talked a lot about the courage and dedication that many of 
our Capitol Police officers showed on October 3 during the shooting 
incident here. It was extraordinary to see people put their lives on 
the line without getting paid. The same is true of people who are 
working at our Federal prisons. They are putting their lives on the 
line every day they go into work in a dangerous environment.
  I heard from another furloughed employee of the prison. She said:

       I am a single parent with two sons . . . My sons depend on 
     me and only me. I have to pay for my sons' lunch and 
     extracurricular activities, which keep him out of trouble and 
     gives him something to do. I also have medication that my son 
     and I need on a monthly basis which we cannot go without . . 
     . The oil here in Berlin, NH, is absolutely high.

  Berlin is in the north country of New Hampshire so it gets cold there 
in the winter. She concluded:

       What are we going to say to the bill collectors? Can anyone 
     answer that?

  What kind of answers can we give to these people who are putting 
their lives on the line every day working for the government to protect 
all of us? Yet we are not giving them the paycheck that they earned.
  I also heard from a furloughed employee with the Department of 
Agriculture in New Hampshire who is on furlough. She said:

       It is an understatement to say I am a bit anxious and 
     scared. I live from paycheck to paycheck.

  She told me she is worried about going into debt as a result of this 
shutdown. She said, ``I love my job at USDA and feel I make a 
difference every day to make this a better world.'' She urged me to 
work with my colleagues here to get her back to work.
  Those are just a few examples of the stories that we are hearing 
every day from people in New Hampshire who are affected by this 
shutdown. The consequences are very real and they get worse with every 
day that it goes on.
  As bad as that is, the consequences of a default of this country 
refusing to pay its debt are even worse. While Social Security and 
Medicare have not been affected by the shutdown, that would change if 
we default. A default could delay or disrupt Social Security checks 
that are due to go out at the beginning of November. Medicare, 
Medicaid, veterans benefits, and military salaries, all of those could 
be affected by a default. According to the Treasury, delayed or 
disrupted payments would prevent 57.5 million Americans

[[Page 15684]]

from receiving Social Security benefits in a timely manner and 
interfere with payments to 3.4 million veterans.
  This could put the most vulnerable in jeopardy and prevent them from 
receiving the benefits they have earned. That is why the majority in 
both parties, in both Chambers in Congress, recognizes that defaulting 
on this country's obligations is not an option.
  My former colleague and fellow Senator Judd Gregg, who is a 
Republican--and while we do not agree on everything, this is one issue 
we certainly agree on. In an op-ed published by The Hill newspaper he 
said that brinkmanship on default is:

       The political equivalent of playing Russian roulette with 
     all of the chambers of the gun loaded. It is the ultimate no-
     win strategy . . . A default would lead to some level of 
     chaos in the debt markets, which would lead to a significant 
     contraction in economic activity, which would lead to job 
     losses, which would lead to higher spending by the federal 
     government and lower tax revenues, which would lead to more 
     debt.

  In other words, as Senator Gregg said it so well: It is short-sighted 
and irresponsible. There is no doubt we need to keep working on a long-
term budget for this country. But we have to do it in a way that is 
responsible. That is why I certainly hope that the Senate will be able 
to agree on the legislation that is currently before this body. I hope 
the House will come to the table. I hope we can all agree that allowing 
this country to default on our debt, to not pay our bills, would have 
disastrous consequences.
  We are not going to be that irresponsible. We still have some time to 
get this done. Not long. So far the financial markets and the American 
people have been more than patient. Everybody is frustrated. Everybody 
understands that it is time for us to act and to act now.
  I yield the floor.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak 
for such time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, as we know, this is the 11th day of a 
completely manufactured crisis, a self-inflicted wound that came about 
because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are obsessed with 
repealing a law that is called the Affordable Care Act--a law that 
passed almost 4 years ago, and the benefits have taken root. I will go 
over those benefits for all Americans and a group of Americans who have 
had a very hard time getting insurance. We are only now being able to 
see them enroll for health insurance, and for some of them, this is the 
first time.
  Because our colleagues are so obsessed with repealing this law, which 
passed almost 4 years ago and was upheld by the Supreme Court as being 
totally constitutional and about which there was a Presidential 
election and a Senate election in which the people who wanted to keep 
this law and make it better won, of course--the Republicans can't 
accept it. As a result, they have shut down the government.
  We wouldn't know it if we listened to the speeches now because they 
have somewhat changed. Now they are saying they want cuts in Medicare 
and Social Security. That is what they want. But when we go back 11 
days, before the government shutdown, Speaker Boehner was crystal 
clear. He said: The American people don't want a government shutdown, 
but they don't want ObamaCare either.
  The government shut down. They didn't listen to us. We explained to 
them that if the government shuts down, that won't stop the Affordable 
Care Act because those funds come from a different part of the 
government; they don't come from the appropriated moneys. At least 85 
percent of the Affordable Care Act comes from another part of the 
government. We begged them and told them: If you shut down the 
government, health care is going to go forward anyway. Why on Earth 
would you shut down the government? They didn't listen. Now people in 
the country are saying: What are you guys doing?
  I am prayerfully hopeful they will turn around and let us reopen this 
government--the government of the greatest country on Earth--and that 
they will also allow us to pay our bills and stop the possibility of 
default. If default happens, it will be the first time in our history.
  Yes, we are in the middle of a crisis, but it is manufactured and it 
is made up. If you think about deficits, look at what has happened 
since President Obama took office. Deficits have been cut in half. It 
can't be about deficits. The Affordable Care Act is not going to be 
stopped. What is this all about? A temper tantrum? A childish way to 
handle a situation about which they are not happy?
  So Republicans who are listening to me know, I have served five 
Presidents since I came to Washington, first as a House Member and then 
as a Senator representing the largest State in the Union, the most 
fantastic State in the Union--but that is only my personal view--
California. There have been five Presidents--three Republicans and two 
Democrats. Obviously, I didn't agree with these Presidents all the 
time. Sometimes I really disagreed with them, such as over the Iraq war 
and tax breaks for billionaires. Both of those added mightily to the 
deficit. I opposed those, but I accepted the fact that all I could do 
was work to change things in a democratic way, try to pass legislation 
on those issues to bring the troops home and to make sure everyone pays 
their fair share. I didn't win those issues.
  We all know that, yes, there are many times one votes against the 
debt ceiling as a show of displeasure, but we have never brought down 
the full faith and credit of the United States. The last time the 
Republicans tried this a couple of years ago, the Dow Jones average 
plunged and it cost us $19 billion. You would think they would have 
learned a lesson from that, but they didn't. You would think they would 
have learned a lesson from the Newt Gingrich shutdown that made their 
poll numbers plunge then.
  We need to behave like grownups. I am prayerful and hopeful that we 
can see the talks that are starting in the Senate continue across party 
lines to resolve this.
  Let's be clear. It is easy to solve this problem. This is the great 
news: It is easy to solve the problem. Allow our bill that passed here 
about 12 days ago to be voted on in the House--it will allow this 
government to reopen--and do not attach any riders to it, such as 
cutting Medicare, Social Security, or whatever your pet idea is. Then 
let's sit down and negotiate through the Appropriations Committee 
chairman, Barbara Mikulski, and through the Budget Committee chairman, 
Patty Murray. Then they can sit down with their counterparts and 
resolve our differences on spending, the deficit, and deficit 
reduction. It is very easy.
  What Senator Reid is saying is absolutely the right thing to say. Pay 
our bills, and don't allow us to default. Pay our bills, open the 
government, and then we can talk about anything and everything that has 
to do with the budget.
  Last week when we were in the middle of this, I went home to see how 
the Affordable Care Act was working in California. We are a State that 
has fully embraced the Affordable Care Act. We are 38 million strong, 
and we have millions of uninsured--millions of uninsured. I am getting 
daily reports from constituents. They are talking about the Affordable 
Care Act and what it means to them. These are constituents such as 
Janice Brown, a semiretired travel agent from Prather, CA. She called 
the help line and downloaded an application to buy a plan for $1,500 a 
month for herself and her husband. She said to the Associated Press 
that was $1,000 less than her current private plan. She said:

       I'm thrilled. The coverage is better. It's fantastic.


[[Page 15685]]


  Why do my friends want to shut down the government and stop Janice 
Brown, a semiretired travel agent from my State, from getting 
affordable health care? Why? Does it make them feel better to do that? 
I would hope not.
  Dr. Travis Sanchez runs a chiropractic clinic in Salinas. It is one 
of the small businesses buying coverage under Covered California. Under 
the Affordable Care Act, Sanchez plans to offer his full-time employees 
the health care coverage which they currently lack. Do you know what he 
says? The Affordable Care Act is going to be life-changing for many of 
the people whom I see as a clinician every day.
  Then Covered California told us about Paul Torrigino of Sacramento. 
He enrolled in a bronze plan. In California, you can get a gold plan, a 
silver plan and a bronze plan and the higher the plan--the gold plan--
the less of a copay. The bronze plan is less costly. So he said he 
enrolled in a bronze plan that was extremely affordable. He said:

       Oh my gosh, the insurance has been going up for the last 
     few years like crazy. All our money was going to pay for 
     medical insurance.

  Now he has this very affordable plan.
  Leslie Foster, a 28-year-old freelance filmmaker in Hollywood, told 
the Wall Street Journal he found a plan that will cost him $62 a month. 
Because Leslie earns $20,000 a year, Federal assistance will pick up 
three-quarters of the cost of his premium. Leslie says he hasn't had 
comprehensive health insurance since 2006.
  Why are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle trying to stop 
Leslie from getting comprehensive affordable health insurance? Because 
they didn't like the results of the election? Because they were mad the 
Supreme Court said the bill was constitutional?
  I am at a loss to understand it.
  Then I have San Franciscan Paul Cello. He told KQED that he selected 
a plan that would save him more than $300 a month. He said:

       It's like a whole 'nother world. The coverage is better . . 
     . a lower premium, no preexisting condition exclusions, I get 
     mental health coverage, so there's way more coverage than I 
     had and I'm going to be saving.

  These are real people with a heart and a pulse and a life and hopes 
and dreams and they are finally getting health insurance. Yet my 
friends on the other side of the aisle are stamping their feet and 
having a tantrum because they don't like it. I don't know why they 
don't like it. They ought to come to meet these people.
  I have Rachel Mansfield of La Quinta. Nothing could dissuade her. She 
sent in an application for Covered California on Tuesday. She has been 
waiting for the exchange to start so she and her husband could get 
health insurance. She got it. Her new premium will be around $400 for 
both of them, with higher quality coverage than she currently has.
  Melissa Harris, a communications student at Fresno State, stopped at 
a Covered California tent on campus Tuesday. She is paying $600 a 
month--with help from family members--for insurance through her former 
employer. She has diabetes, hypertension and other medical issues and 
lives on disability payments. Under the Affordable Care Act, which 
prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting 
conditions, Harris said she can afford health insurance on her own. 
``It's a godsend for me--a blessing,'' Harris, 33, said.
  At the Fresno County Department of Social Services, people were 
signing up for Medicaid. ``I came in for food stamps,'' Kevin Burke, 
51, told the Fresno Bee. An assembly worker, Burke said he has been out 
of work for two years. He had Medi-Cal previously, but was disenrolled 
when his daughter turned 18, he said. Under the Affordable Care Act, 
Americans under 133% of the federal poverty level are now eligible for 
Medicaid, regardless of how old their children are, or if they have 
children at all.
  At Vista Health Center, Rufina Arango, who is diabetic, filled out an 
application for coverage through a significant expansion of Medi-Cal, 
the state's Medicaid program. Rufina and her family lost their health 
insurance several years ago, when her husband was laid off after 22 
years working for a wood products manufacturer in Windsor. ``It's 
great, because it is going to help many of us. If not for Obamacare, 
many of us would not qualify for health insurance,'' Rufina told the 
Press Democrat.
  I have to point out an op-ed piece that appeared in the Washington 
Post this week about the experience of one of my constituents with the 
Affordable Care Act. This constituent of mine and her son were also on 
the Lawrence O'Donnell show last night. Anyone who watched that show--
anyone with heart and a soul--would understand how amazing it is for 
her that the Affordable Care Act passed. Let me tell you the story.
  Janine Reid is a writer from the San Francisco Bay area. This is the 
title of her opinion piece that ran in the Washington Post. ``ObamaCare 
saved my family from financial ruin.'' Let me repeat the title. 
``ObamaCare saved my family from financial ruin.''
  She relates her experience with her loving son, Mason. He had brain 
cancer and he had to undergo major surgeries and multiple surgeries. He 
would have hit his lifetime limit and the family would have been driven 
into, in her words, the ``financial abyss'' without the Affordable Care 
Act. Do you know what she says? She writes that the family thanks ``God 
and whoever else would listen for our good fortune to have coverage.'' 
She ends her piece with this line: If I could get those who are trying 
to repeal this law:

       . . . on a conference call, I would explain this to them. I 
     would tell them that while they were busy trying to derail 
     the Affordable Care Act over the past two years, Mason has 
     again learned to walk, talk, eat and shoot a three-point 
     basket.''

  Why would anyone--anyone in the Senate, in the House, in the 
country--want to hurt a family like that? I am just saying, I don't get 
it. Because a law is a law is a law. We don't decide that one day we 
are going to undermine a law. You don't do that. You live by the law. 
If you want to change it, of course, you have a chance. They tried 43 
times to repeal it. It didn't get repealed. They shut down the 
government over it and it didn't get repealed and it will not get 
repealed. My constituents are not going back. No one is going to take 
away their benefits.
  Most Americans may not even realize the benefits they are already 
getting under the Affordable Care Act. Wherever they live, whether in 
the State of the Presiding Officer or my State, 3 million young adults 
are now covered through their parents' plan. Three million young adults 
are now insured through their parents' plan, and 71 million Americans 
are getting preventive care, such as checkups, birth control, and 
immunizations. Let me say it again. Millions of Americans are 
benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Seventy-one million Americans 
are getting free preventive care, such as checkups, birth control, and 
immunizations. Three million young adults are now insured through their 
parents' plans.
  Why do my colleagues want to take that away from Americans? Why do my 
colleagues want to shut down the government? Because they don't like 
it. What is it they don't like about this; that some young person 
doesn't have to fret or his parents don't have to be worried sick that 
their kid doesn't have health insurance. Now 17 million kids with 
preexisting conditions, such as asthma and diabetes, can no longer be 
denied coverage. Why do my friends want to take that away from the 
families in the United States of America? Why? Why did they shut down 
the government to take that away? What are they thinking?
  Insurers can no longer cancel your health insurance because you get 
sick. The Chair knows as do I that you could be going along 100 miles 
an hour and all of a sudden get an illness and be shocked and all of a 
sudden imagine getting a note from your insurer saying: Sorry you just 
got sick, Senator Boxer, but we are canceling your health insurance. 
That happened every day of the week, but it can't happen anymore. Why 
do my Republican friends want to cancel out that benefit? No lifetime 
limits on coverage.

[[Page 15686]]

  I just told the story about the woman who lives in the San Francisco 
Bay area whose son was born with a brain tumor and who needed constant 
operations. They hit up against the lifetime limit. But when ObamaCare 
went into effect, otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act, guess 
what, no more lifetime limits and the child was saved and the family 
was saved from financial ruin.
  These are just some of the benefits that are going into effect and 
now are in effect.
  Then the Republicans said: Oh, the Affordable Care Act is going to 
make everything cost so much. No, health care costs are growing at the 
slowest rate in over 50 years, and insurance companies have to justify 
premium hikes, so we are getting back checks if they overcharge us. 
Listen, 8.5 million Americans have received rebate checks from their 
insurance companies because of the Affordable Care Act. Do my friends 
want to get that money back, take it away from the people? They shut 
down the government. They must think that is a very bad idea.
  I can't answer the question as to why they want to take away these 
benefits, but I can guess at their motivation. They are throwing a 
temper tantrum. They don't like the way the election turned out. They 
don't like what the Supreme Court did. A law is a law.
  I don't get it. Speaker Boehner said he is shutting down the 
government, punishing people, because of ObamaCare. We told him you 
can't stop it. He tried and failed 43 times to repeal it. He stamped 
his foot and he shut down the government. Now that we have proven to 
him he can't stop the Affordable Care Act, now that he sees how many 
people are benefiting from it, he should open the government. Eleven 
days the greatest country in the world has been shut down.
  I have to tell you, in my great State--and we could all talk about 
our States, I know the Chair did this--we have a magnificent national 
park called Yosemite. Honest to God, the first time I stepped on that 
valley floor I thought I was in Heaven. I had never seen anything like 
it. There are 3,500 Park Service employees who have been furloughed, 
with 600 of them at Yosemite.
  Here is the thing people don't seem to understand. It is not only the 
pain of the people who have saved to get to a place such as Yosemite 
and saved for their families and are looking forward to this 
opportunity, it is also the small businesses that surround the park.
  Douglas Shaw, co-owner of Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort, may 
have to lay off 30 percent of his staff. He said:

       We're a good example of a business that could die if this 
     continues. This is all we've got, and I'm scared, honestly. I 
     don't think a lot of people realize how important this issue 
     is for a great many people whose livelihoods are at stake.

  Derek Arakelian and his wife Marielle Debree were laid off from their 
jobs at Yosemite. They held a yard sale to raise money. They held a 
yard sale to raise money. They said:

       We've got a new little boy and a lot of expenses. We need 
     to make money to pay our bills.

  Why are they shutting down the government? The Affordable Care Act is 
moving forward. A law is a law is a law is a law. We all have our 
issues. Serving here for a long time, as I said, I have opposed wars, 
opposed tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, I have opposed rollbacks 
in environmental regulations that I thought were critical, and I saw us 
turn away from sensible ways to protect our people. I wasn't happy. I 
have a right not to be happy, and they have a right not to be happy. 
But I don't have a right to decide which laws I am going to say should 
be enforced. I have an obligation, if I don't like the law, to work my 
heart out in the next election and change things. That is what you do 
in a democracy. You don't pick and choose.
  Then they have their little bills coming over here. I call it 
governing by press release. Something gets hot, they hear a story I am 
going to tell, and they say: Oh, well, we will open that little 
segment.
  We don't run a country that way. We don't run a country by press 
release. We don't run a country in order to get political cover. We 
have an obligation to keep the doors open, to make sure things work 
better, to negotiate over budgets. You don't negotiate by taking 
hostages. This time the hostages are the American people--people such 
as Doug Shaw, co-owner of Yosemite Mountain Resort, and people who are 
laid off--firefighters at the Forest Service. They are working without 
pay. Lovely. We are getting our pay. One of these firefighters says:

       Most people here live paycheck to paycheck.

  It is a disgrace. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will 
stop its seasonal flu tracking program, and furloughed 9,000 employees. 
My understanding is they have brought back some of their employees, but 
they are not getting paid, and they are standing sentry.
  David Johnson of San Francisco is the CEO of GigaGen, which does 
immune system research to help organ transplant succeed. The NIH 
awarded him a small business grant of over $1 million. He has already 
hired staff, but he can't get the funds until this shutdown ends. How 
many of us have read about people who get into trouble because their 
body rejects the organ? Here is a guy getting $1 million from the NIH, 
and he can't get the funds. It is shocking.
  Why do they shut down the government? They don't like the health care 
bill that is helping so many people. Now they don't even talk about it. 
Now they talk about cutting Social Security and Medicare. That is their 
new dream. That is what they want now. I don't know how that makes us a 
better country. They can explain it for themselves. Open the 
government, pay our bills, stop the default, and then we can negotiate. 
The President has been clear. There is nothing he won't talk about.
  Speaking as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works 
Committee and as a member of the commerce committee, 93 percent of the 
EPA have been furloughed. The Environmental Protection Agency has the 
support of about 75 percent of the American people, if not more. They 
are under attack constantly. That is one reason we never saw a mini-
bill to restore the Environmental Protection Agency. They don't care 
over there. But what do these employees do? They guard our landmark 
environmental laws. They ensure our drinking water is safe, our rivers 
are safe to swim in, and our air is safe to breathe. They make sure 
that Superfund sites are cleaned up. Five hundred Superfund sites, and 
they have stopped the cleanup. And look at what a Superfund site is: It 
is a toxic brew of toxins that can hurt you, such as arsenic, benzine--
you name it, the worst things. My Republican friends shut down the 
government because they want to stop the Affordable Care Act. They are 
also now stopping cleanup of Superfund sites in their own communities 
where they are a threat to children, to pregnant women, and to our 
families and our seniors. How does that make us a better country when 
we have no inspectors on the ground, not one in California, to make 
sure the air is safe and the water is safe?
  Then, if we care about farming--and I know most of us do--EPA is 
responsible for the inventory of pesticides imported from abroad. This 
means that millions of dollars of imported agricultural chemicals have 
been stuck at U.S. ports because EPA personnel are not on hand to 
approve them for entry. This could be devastating for our agricultural 
economy, and it could further raise food prices for consumers.
  Somebody explain to me how a government shutdown helps the farmers 
who are waiting for these pesticides to be cleared by the EPA. Somebody 
explain to me how a government shutdown helps when we have many road 
projects that are just getting ready to go forward, but we don't have 
any of the agencies ready to complete the studies to make sure they are 
safe enough to go forward. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs at 
stake, and most of them, when it comes to the highway bill, are in the 
private sector.
  We just learned yesterday that 92 percent of the workers at the 
Nuclear

[[Page 15687]]

Regulatory Commission have been furloughed. The Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission fulfills a critical mission. The NRC was created ``to ensure 
the safe use of radioactive materials.'' Anyone who has been alive the 
last year or so knows about Fukushima and what happened to the people 
there and understands when you are dealing with radioactive materials 
you are dealing with danger. The NRC had to furlough 92 percent of the 
workers because the Republicans don't like the Affordable Care Act, and 
they shut down the government.
  Open it up. Enough is enough. Give the people back the government 
they asked for in this last election.
  I understand. I didn't like it many times in my life, but I dealt 
with it. Grow up. Curling up in a corner and having a temper tantrum 
with a blanket and your teddy bear is not the right way to deal with 
it. Open the government, sit down with us, and tell us what you want to 
fix.
  We have already agreed to a low number in the continuing resolution, 
a number we don't like at all and think is too low. We think it is a 
hardship. We agreed to the lower number because we wanted to have a 
chance to negotiate. Senator Mikulski is ready. Senator Murray is 
ready. We tried 21 times to get to conference with them and negotiate a 
budget, and 21 times they objected. And then they have--I have to use 
the word now--the chutzpah to say we won't negotiate when we tried 21 
times to go to conference. There are no inspectors on the job to make 
sure the air is clean, to make sure the water is safe, and to make sure 
the nuclear powerplants are safe.
  The Republicans talk about the parks, and I appreciate it. But they 
fail to mention that the Army Corps manages 12 million acres of public 
lands and waters nationwide, and the recreation areas host 370 million 
visits annually. These recreation areas support local businesses like 
resorts, marinas outfitters, grocery stores, gas stations, and hotels 
which provide goods and services to visitors as well as boost our 
Nation's economy. Because of this Republican shutdown the Corps closed 
Lake Mendocino located north of San Francisco. Lake Mendocino hosts 
half a million visitors annually, and in 2010 visitors spent $12.7 
million at businesses within 30 miles of Lake Mendocino, supporting 106 
jobs and $2.8 million in labor income.
  So we get a little mini-bill over there, open the parks. No, open the 
government. Open all our recreation areas. Don't do this government by 
piecemeal, government by press release, government by your favorite 
agency. It is ridiculous. No party, Republican or Democratic, has the 
right to say to a community: You will thrive, but you will die. No 
party has the right.
  I have a community near Los Angeles called University Park. The L.A. 
Times did a big story. The children there are suffering illness and 
everyone believes it is from an oil and gas site nearby. It is an 
environmental issue. The kids are suffering, and we don't know what is 
wrong with them. We called the EPA. They said: Senator we will be right 
on it. The government shut down. We don't have any inspectors in 
California.
  Those kids are sick. So we get a small bill. Let's help the kids with 
cancer. Of course we want to. What about these kids? We don't know what 
they have. No party, Republican or Democratic, should say this child 
lives, and we are not sure about this child.
  That is not America. This is one nation under God, indivisible, with 
liberty and justice for all. It is not for the Republicans to decide 
what they want to fund. It is for all of us to decide. Open the 
government. You shut it down because of the Affordable Care Act; I 
appreciate it. Fight that. We were with the President for a couple of 
hours yesterday. Republican Senators were with him today. He said he 
would look at everything. But don't keep this government closed and 
don't bring us to the first default we have ever had.
  The National Transportation Safety Board furloughed 380 of its 400 
employees. In my State we had an investigation going on into the Asiana 
Airlines Flight 214 crash. This crucial hearing was to include the 
testimony of foreign officials from Asia. Its postponement and the 
ongoing shutdown will delay the entire investigation. We need to know 
what went wrong, but this shutdown has shut down that investigation. 
Two weeks ago there was a small plane crash at the Santa Monica Airport 
that killed four people, and the NTSB is unable to investigate the 
crash. They had to take their materials, stick them in a file, and 
hopefully, some day they will come back to it.
  Open this government. Don't say this community will thrive and that 
one will die, this family will get help and this one won't, this 
Federal worker will get paid, but we are not sure about that Federal 
worker, while they take their checks. This is stunning.
  It is no wonder the American people are expressing their views, and I 
hope they will continue to put pressure on those who have this 
government shut down. There is no winner in a shutdown. It is 
devastating. And my friends keep saying they don't want it.
  So open the government. It is easy. We did it here. It is waiting 
over there for John Boehner to call it up. Don't add your pet peeves to 
it. I have a lot of pet peeves I would like to add to it, too. This 
shutdown is devastating for our workers, our businesses, our 
contractors, for our economy.
  Speaker Boehner, put that bill on the floor. Let's open this 
government. Let's not default for the first time.
  I was here in the House when Ronald Reagan was the President. Here is 
what he said about default:

       The full consequences of a default--or even the serious 
     prospect of default--by the United States are impossible to 
     predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full 
     faith and credit of the United States would have substantial 
     effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of 
     the dollar.

  We named an airport after him, a building after him. Let's pass this 
debt ceiling in his honor. He warned us. What has gone wrong with the 
party of Ronald Reagan? Where have they gone? What are they thinking--
shut down the government? The last time they did, it cost a fortune. 
The last time they played with the debt, it cost a fortune. We hear 
about people dumping American bonds. Is that what they want?
  Open up the government. Let the people have their government. It is a 
self-inflicted mess.
  It is as though you wake up in the morning, it is a pretty nice day, 
you feel pretty good and, all of a sudden, you decide you are going to 
hit yourself with a brick. Oh my God.
  These little mini bills--how ridiculous.
  That reminds me, one of my friends gave me this analogy, which I 
think is right on, which is you see a woman drowning and you grab her 
and you take her halfway to the shore and you leave her and she drowns 
anyway. That is what these mini ``press release'' bills are. You find 
someone bleeding to death but you only sew them up halfway. It is a 
self-inflicted mess. That is the bad news.
  The good news is, because it is self-inflicted, it is easy to get out 
of it. All you have to do there is take up the Senate bill and pass it. 
The Presiding Officer knows, she served there proudly. It has the 
Republican budget numbers in it, which we think are way too low, but we 
agreed to them as a compromise because we did not want to see the 
government shut down.
  Take up the bill and pass it. Then we can talk about all these 
issues. Don't allow the greatest Nation in the world to default.

       Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United 
     States would have substantial effects on the domestic 
     financial markets and the value of the dollar.

  I used to work on Wall Street--a very long time ago. We saw what 
happened when the markets thought we were not going to get together and 
resolve this default situation. The markets started to go down, 300 
points, 200 points, and then at the mere hope that we could fix this 
problem, the markets shot up. The markets are watching. They know what 
is happening here. We are going to have a vote to lift the debt 
ceiling, to make sure we do not default on bills that were already 
incurred.
  Let me be clear on that. We are talking about paying the bills we 
already

[[Page 15688]]

incurred. You have to do that when you are a homeowner. You pay your 
mortgage. You pay your bills.
  Then they started to say, what is a default? That was unbelievable. I 
looked it up in Black's Law Dictionary. If you don't pay your bills, 
that is a default. Don't tell me you pay the interest on the debt but 
you cannot pay the other bills--no, no, that is not the Black's Law 
Dictionary definition. Pay your bills. Don't make this Nation a 
deadbeat. If you want to treat your family that way, that is your 
choice, but this is the USA family. We do not default and we do not 
threaten default. Ronald Reagan warned us:

       Open up the Government, pay your bills.

  It is basic stuff. It is not complicated. Majority Leader Reid has 
been clear. He is a guy who can compromise, negotiate, talk--he has 
been around a long time. But he just said it: Open the government, pay 
our bills, and we will negotiate.
  We are going to hear a lot of words, but I want people to understand 
why the government is shut down. The government is shut down because 
the House, Republican House under the leadership of John Boehner or 
Eric Cantor or Paul Ryan--we are never sure. Every day it is someone 
new but it is supposed to be John Boehner--fine. I like him. That 
doesn't change where we are. They refuse to take up the bill that opens 
up the government--let's be clear--just until November. And it takes 
the numbers the Republicans like and we do not like and we say OK, we 
will give you that, let's keep the government open. We did it over 
here. I thank my Republican friends who voted to allow us to vote on 
that bill. That was a hard vote for them and I am very appreciative of 
that.
  All Boehner has to do is take up that bill and pass it. That is all. 
Then we are out of the shutdown mess and that self-inflicted wound is 
gone. We can negotiate over the budget as we should. Then all they have 
to do is join us and make sure we do not default for the first time in 
history and make this country a deadbeat nation. How horrible. How 
embarrassing.
  I will close with this. This self-inflicted wound mattered so much 
that President Obama had to cancel a trip to the Asian countries. That 
trip was important for our economy and for jobs and to get foreign 
investment. They did not care. We did our best, we sent the best face 
we could, Senator Kerry, Secretary of State. He did his best, but I 
know that was not a good thing to do because it gave China the upper 
hand. China made some cracks about the dysfunction here in the West. We 
are dysfunctional here, self-inflicted dysfunction, self-inflicted 
crisis.
  This is not Hurricane Sandy. This is not the horrible blizzard that 
happened in South Dakota. I want to send my best to our colleagues 
there who are suffering because of what happened from that blizzard. 
Someday we will talk a little bit about climate change--maybe we can 
move forward--and the extreme weather that is happening. But I am not 
going to talk about that now. I have enough problems.
  What we need to do today is the right thing for the country: Open up 
the government that belongs to the American people. It is easy. That is 
our job. Make sure we do not default. Then we sit down as friends, as 
colleagues across the aisle, and we negotiate all the important issues 
that Republicans care about and Democrats care about. I look forward to 
those negotiations.
  I hope as they are going on around now in little back rooms around us 
that we are finding a way out of this mess. But we cannot forget what 
brought us here and the reason I wanted to be here today is to make it 
known in this Congressional Record the harm that has been done. There 
is a reason why there has not been a shutdown since I think it was 
1996. There is a reason--because the people who lived through it 
recognized it was devastating. I guess the memory faded. People say: 
Oh, there have been 19 shutdowns. Yes, but there has not been one in 
all those years, since 1996. It is a lot of years. The reason is, it 
was devastating.
  I want to put in the Record, first of all, how the Affordable Care 
Act is benefiting the people of this country already. Yes, it has had 
its major problems on getting on its webpage and the rest. We had that 
the first day in California, but we had millions of visits to the site, 
millions. We didn't expect it. It is going to be smoothed out. Yes, 
there will be ways to fix it. But I wanted to put in the Record the 
individual stories of my people and how they will benefit and how, it 
seems to me, so counterintuitive to stop a bill that was passed almost 
4 years ago, upheld by the Supreme Court, and now finally is going into 
place. It is wrong to shut down the government because of such a law 
that is bringing peace of mind to so many--tens of thousands already in 
California signed up. I had to make that point.
  I also want to reiterate what Ronald Reagan said, President Reagan, 
about playing with the full faith and credit of the United States. I 
want the American people to think about why we are in this place and 
how they can stop this from ever happening again, because I think it is 
a disgrace and it is wrong.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. SCOTT. Madam President, I have enjoyed--well, not really, but I 
listened to my colleagues from the left talk about just reopening the 
government. I think to myself as she used the analogy of saving 
someone's life, dragging them halfway to the shore and stopping--I 
think to myself, think about the veterans. The House of Representatives 
passed a bill to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  I think about all those veterans who served our Nation, put their 
lives on the line. The House of Representatives sent over a bill to 
fund the very crucial needs of our veterans. Yet the Senate has failed 
to take it up. I think about the national parks and all the 
opportunities we have to see our parks reopen, see our veterans from 
World War II not denied. But, no, the Senate refuses to take it up.
  I think of NIH and the critical funding that is necessary to continue 
the research. Yet our friends on the left refuse to take up this 
critical piece of legislation.
  I enjoy being lectured to. I call it ``the Democrat lecture series,'' 
but at the end of the day we ought to have action and not simply words. 
I understand it is important for us to figure out who to blame.
  In politics, the lowest common denominator is always fear. Our 
friends on the left do a very good job of assigning blame to someone, 
someplace, somehow, all the time, but what we need is leadership, not 
more information about polls but leadership. We need people committed 
to a cause. In a town that seems to be the epicenter of activity for 
the economy, we have two-thirds of this legislative process, the White 
House and the Senate, being run by our Democratic friends. Yet they 
want to blame the Republicans for the shutdown.
  I call this, no question, undeniably the Democratic shutdown. I hope 
we find ourselves in a position to tell our veterans we were not 
kidding when we made the promise. Promises made should be promises 
kept. There ought to be no question of our commitment. We have seen 
that commitment demonstrated by our friends in the House, Republicans 
and Democrats, working together to pass legislation to take care of our 
veterans. We need more of that. That is leadership, working together, 
finding common ground to take care of those who have made America 
possible. But not today, not in this Senate, not when those bills sit 
idle. But the men and women who served our country cannot sit idle. 
They go without their benefits. I wonder why. I wonder why we are not 
seeing the sense of urgency to take care of those areas where there is 
full agreement. Why are we not taking advantage of the opportunities 
presented to us on a consistent basis by our friends in the House of 
Representatives? I do not understand that. I simply do not understand 
that.
  I will say I do find it very difficult to find common ground in the 
Senate at times. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans and 
Democrats to find something we have in common. I believe we strive to 
work in a bipartisan

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fashion on a consistent basis, and I will tell you that on the most 
important issues it is very difficult. But I have been encouraged in my 
research in the last few days of looking for common ground--I have been 
encouraged that I have found some friends on the left who actually seem 
to agree with my position on some of the most important issues facing 
the Nation today. I will even quote some of my friends to the left as I 
think through the debt ceiling debate.
  As a matter of fact, the first quote I will start with from my 
friends on the left:

       The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's 
     debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

  I concur with my friend on the left. Another quote:

       Interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans. A 
     debt tax Washington did not want to talk about.

  I concur and agree with my friend to the left. Another quote:

       Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and 
     internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here.

  I agree with my friend on the left. My colleague on the left is now 
the President of the United States. These are quotes from Senator 
Barack Obama.
  Our President of the United States and our Vice President, combined, 
voted approximately I think it was 10 or 11 times not to raise the debt 
ceiling of our country. They called it a failure of leadership. I think 
it is interesting. As a small business owner for the last 15 years I 
have had the opportunity to borrow what I considered at the time real 
money. Now that I am in Washington, I have to redefine the definition 
of real money. But at the time I was trying to get my business started. 
I went to a bank to borrow some money. The banker had some very 
interesting questions for me. He wanted to know how I was going to pay 
it back. He wanted to know what assets I was willing to put up in order 
to receive the resources I needed to fund my business.
  I see the debt ceiling debate as a debate over how we explain to our 
investors, the American taxpayers, that we are handling responsibly the 
underlying causes for the need to increase our debt. I cannot tell our 
investors that we are handling our debt--our spending responsibly. I 
cannot tell our investors that we have a plan to balance our budgets. I 
cannot tell our investors, the taxpayers of America, that we are even 
thinking about controlling our spending. No. As a matter of fact, over 
the last 5 years we have spent nearly $5 trillion more than we brought 
in. And our friends on the left want to have a serious conversation 
about the spending of this country.
  I cannot tell our investors, the American taxpayers, what I want to 
tell them, but I can tell them that we do not deserve an increase in 
the debt ceiling unless we produce a plan. I can tell our investors 
here at home that we do not deserve an increase without balancing our 
budgets. I can tell them, the taxpayers of America, that until we are 
willing to cut our spending at the same rate that we increase our 
credit card limit, we don't deserve their confidence in raising the 
debt ceiling.
  Some would ask: Senator Scott, where, pray tell, would you find the 
revenue when our friends in the House of Representatives say that there 
is just no more money for us to cut? We can't find any place to cut 
anything in this $4 trillion spending plan. Really? Well, there are 
many options on how to cut spending here in America.
  Senator Tom Coburn regularly shares reports on government waste. Last 
year he showed how the Market Access Program provided $20 million to 
the Cotton Council International. They used that money to create 
reality TV shows in India intended to promote the use of cotton. India, 
for the record, is an exporter of cotton and produces twice the amount 
the U.S. does.
  The OMB released a report that improper payments for Medicare 
amounted to $47.9 billion in 2010, or 9 percent of Medicare's budget. 
The Chamber of Commerce looked at the Davis-Bacon requirements and 
found that it inflates the costs of Federal construction projects by as 
much as 15 percent and costs the taxpayers over $1 billion annually.
  There are over 1,500 programs in the U.S. Government that are in 
duplication and costing the taxpayers more than $400 billion.
  I would like to be able to share with the investors of America, the 
taxpayers, that we have a plan. I would love to share with the 
taxpayers of America that one day we will balance our budget. I would 
love to tell the taxpayers of America, our investors, that they can 
have confidence in our ability to lead us in such a way that future 
debt increases will be less likely to happen. I have not seen such a 
plan. I have not heard conversations about controlling our debt, only 
conversations about increasing the limit to create more debt.
  I am concerned that as we wrestle with the problems of today we have 
no focus on tomorrow. I hope that this body will work diligently not 
only to have a conversation about the debt limit of America but to have 
a conversation about how we take care of the underlying problem.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  The Senator from California.

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