[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 15762-15763]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               ENDING THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. ANNA G. ESHOO

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 11, 2013

  Ms. ESHOO. Mr. Speaker, today is the 11th day of the government 
shutdown, with 800,000 government employees still out of work, 
including 1,400 of my constituents, due to this reckless, irresponsible 
and high-risk venture of House Republicans. $12.5 million is being lost 
every hour in work and services the government is unable to perform. 
Thousands of small businesses and startups--the backbone of America's 
economy--are without SBA's guaranteed loans and regulatory approval. 
And the latest estimate from the Treasury is that if Congress doesn't 
vote to raise the debt ceiling by October 17th there is a virtual 
guarantee that our economy and the global economy could implode.
  Let's recall how we arrived here as we reach the end of the second 
week of this government shutdown. It all began when House Republicans 
insisted that the Affordable Care Act be repealed in order to win their 
votes to keep the government functioning.
  This non-starter demand has now bled into the debt ceiling debate and 
mutated into a litany of others: offshore oil drilling permits; ending 
``net neutrality'' policies; approving the

[[Page 15763]]

Keystone XL pipeline; defunding the 2010 Wall Street reform law; and 
piecemeal funding of popular government programs. If I were to try to 
explain this to small children, I'd say it's as if Harry Potter 
overdosed on polyjuice potion.
  What I can only expect next from House Republicans is something we'd 
find in a children's fantasy book, which is meaningless in the real 
world. It's meaningless for the millions of Americans the government 
shutdown affects, and the low-income mothers and their infants without 
nutrition benefits. It's meaningless for pre-school children left 
without a Head Start program, and the hundreds of people infected with 
salmonella because the FDA couldn't do its job.
  Mr. Speaker, the House Republicans need to drop the fantasies and 
bring a bill to the floor to reopen the government with no strings 
attached. Let's raise the debt ceiling like we've always done to pay 
America's bills. Let's end this manufactured crisis so we can negotiate 
a long-term, fiscally responsible path forward for our country. Let's 
do the job the American people sent us here to do.

                          ____________________