October 3, 2013/United States/U.S. Senate Congressional Record (raw)

= Congressional Record (raw) = undefined

Call to order
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Prayer
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Pledge of Allegiance
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Appointment of Acting President Pro Tempore
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The clerk will please read a communication to the Senate from the.

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Under the previous order, having received {{CP US Bill|113|H.J. Res.|70, 71 and 73 from the House, the measures are considered to have received their second readings and objection to further proceedings is considered to have been heard for purposes of rule XIV.

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The majority leader is recognized.

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Mr. President, following leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 2 p.m. this afternoon, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes. The first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. The Republicans will control the first 30 minutes and the majority the second 30 minutes.

Continuing Appropriations
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Mr. President, yesterday I made the Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner an offer I thought he could not refuse, but he did. House Republican leaders have demanded the Senate join them in a conference committee to work out budget differences. That seemed like a good idea to me. That is why Democrats yesterday asked consent to do exactly that, go to conference—on anything. You want to talk about spending; you want to talk about health care; you want to talk about agriculture; you want to talk about the post office, it does not matter. We are happy to do so. Our agreement that we proposed to them: whatever you want to talk about.

So I formally offered that, first in a letter to the Speaker. I talked to him. Then I came to the floor here and reiterated the offer. My only condition: that the conferees negotiate in the light of day while the government is open for business. That did not seem too unreasonable.

To my surprise, the Speaker refused and the Senate Republicans objected. House Republicans truly do not know what they want. They cannot take yes for an answer. We have agreed to their budget number, which we thought should be higher. We agreed to that. They want to go to conference. We agreed to that. But they have had trouble agreeing to anything for quite some time now.

This spring, after years of Republicans loudly longing for a budget passed by the Senate, despite already having a budget with the force of law, we decided: Let’s give them their way. We worked hard, led by Senator Murray, to have a budget that we completed after 5 o’clock in the morning.

We voted on over 100 amendments. Then Senate Democrats, following what they said—they, the Republicans said they wanted, regular order. They said: Let’s go to conference to work out the differences. They passed their budget; we passed ours. Guess what. After all of this haranguing about having a budget and regular order, they decided they did not like that so well.

It was really very difficult to comprehend. When Republicans finally got what they said they wanted, it turned out they did not want it after all. Yesterday, the same story. Republicans asked to go to conference on a budget. Democrats agreed. Republicans objected. Those tactics truly are back to Orwellian. They believe that if you go east, you are really going west. If you are going north, you are really going south. You are not going down, you are going up. Whatever, obviously, they say does not really mean anything in reality.

But maybe they really do not know what they want. Maybe they do not have a game plan. It is becoming more apparent every day. One of the House Republican tea party leaders, a Congressman from Indiana by the name of Stutzman, admitted this to one of the Washington newspapers yesterday. Here is what he said. Listen to this:

We are not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this.

Now listen to this, the last phrase of his statement:

But I don’t know what that is.

If there is any way I disrespected him, or we disrespected him, we do not want that to happen. We apologize. They want to get something out of this. Well, let’s consider that. Except they do not know what they want. It is a little hard to make a deal there.

Republicans should come to their senses and realize there is more than wounded pride on the line. The longer this Republican government shutdown persists, the harder it will be on our economy. I hope they can figure out what it is they want, before the damage to the economic recovery is even more irreversible than they have already created.

It is obvious the strain of the self-inflicted shutdown is beginning to wear on many Republicans. Pick up the papers today. Listen to the news. There were reports of vicious infighting from yesterday’s Republican caucus meeting. This is what one Republican said after the meeting:

It was very evident to everyone in the room that the junior Senator from Texas does not have a strategy. He never had a strategy and could never answer questions about what the end game was. Just like Stutzman from Indiana—that is the danger of following the tea party, because you are following and you are headed off the cliff. That is where we have been and that is where we already are, trying to get off the cliff that they put us over.

Tea party Republicans do not really want a way out of the government shutdown. I read here direct statements yesterday from one of their candidates—she is a Congressman. She ran for President. She said: Finally we’ve gotten what we want. We’ve shut down government.

So I think the statements I have made about their being anarchists are pretty valid. They are glad the government is shut down. They do not believe in government. A government shutdown is the end game for them, obviously. Tea party Republicans do not really want a way out of this government shutdown. They like it the way it is.

But in addition to the statement coming from the Republican Senate caucus, there are some rumblings over in the House. More than 20 reasonable Republicans in the House have said on the record that they are ready to pass a way to fund this government right now.

I was not a math major—far from it. But I can count. If those 20 reasonable Republicans unite with 200 House Democrats, that is a majority in the House of Representatives. That would end the shutdown now. So I have a message for my mainstream Republican colleagues: If you ever hope to get out of this mess to end this Republican government shutdown, get rid of the tea party direction. Work with us. Help us reopen the government. We can start negotiations today.

As everyone knows, I think, I had a meeting with Leader McConnell, Speaker Boehner, and Leader Pelosi last night at the White House. The Speaker said after the meeting—of course it was obvious during the meeting—the only thing that he cares about is ObamaCare. That is what this is all about. They do not care about anything else.

We know what this government shutdown has done to our country already. General Clapper, one of the leaders in our intelligence gathering information around the world, has stated that 72 percent of people who work in our intelligence agencies are home watching TV, reading a book. They are not at work, protecting us from the bad people around the world—and there are lots of them.

We have talked about our national parks here. It has really been bad for people coming to Nevada who want to recreate in our parks. But not only for them. It has hurt business in Nevada, as it has around the country.

NIH. We all understand how important it is that people who are sick and ill have the ability to have the best care in the world. If you are at the end of the line and you are fortunate enough to be able to say: Well, maybe there is still another chance; they are doing something back in Washington at one of the National Institutes of Health; maybe they can help.

Not now. They cannot do it now because of the Republicans.

The Centers for Disease Control is not a very glamorous sounding name, but that is what it is about, controlling disease. Most of them are furloughed. Senator Harkin came on the floor yesterday and talked about a real serious problem. They could not figure out what it was. People were sick and dying. The Centers for Disease Control figured it out. It was because of pomegranate seeds coming from some other country. They work on these scourges every day because things come up that make people sick. We are in flu season now. They are not working on that.

The second in command in the House of Representatives, Congressman Cantor, said yesterday: Well, that’s okay. We know that there’s a lot of problems around our country with the shutdown. But we are going to, one by one, reopen those agencies.

It is so obvious. It is so obvious. This is all directed toward President Obama’s signature legislation, ObamaCare. They want to piecemeal this and wind up trying to hurt ObamaCare. Even Dr. Coburn who is a medical doctor, never known for being a shrinking violet, has said: This is not the way to go. ObamaCare is funded, except for maybe 10 percent.

We are willing to sit down and talk about anything they want to talk about in conference. But the government has to open first. It is time for my Republican friends to defy their tea party overlords.

Every day that passes the idea of shutting down the government in order to repeal ObamaCare is becoming so transparent and so bad for the country. No one—I mean, it was not very popular for them to do it anyway. Every day that goes by it is less popular. Considering that only a handful of Americans supported the strategy, as I said, to begin with, it is a bad sign for them, the Republicans.

Millions of Americans have visited Federal marketplace exchanges over the last 3 days. The demand is so high that on some of the Web sites, they crash. This is not unprecedented. Google, when they first started, they experienced the same challenges. State-based exchanges have flourished virtually everywhere. Take, for example, my friend the Republican leader’s State of Kentucky. More than 100,000 people have already visited the State’s health care exchange and Web site.

More than 10,000 people have filled out applications for health coverage, and more than 3,000 Kentucky families have already enrolled in new coverage. This shows the hunger the American people have to sign up for affordable health care.

We have had Republicans come here and say: Oh, it is so bad for the job market. Throughout the press today—and I will only pick a few of them—for example, one out of the New York Times. Speaker Boehner said it is job killing; Ted Cruz, it is hurting the American people; Senator McConnell, it is a big reason we are turning into a nation of part-time workers.

I am not going to go through all the economists, but they all say the same thing—it doesn’t hurt jobs at all. Mark Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics—who, by the way, was John McCain’s chief economic adviser when he ran for President—said: I don’t see ObamaCare as impacting the job market. A man by the name of Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economist who worked for President George W. Bush, when asked about how it affected the economy: Not a whole lot.

There are many more quotes, but we get the picture. When the history books are written—and they will be written—ObamaCare will be seen as the greatest single step since Medicare to provide fairness to all Americans. The more America learns about the affordable care provided in ObamaCare, the more they like it. And the Republicans would be wise to abandon their impractical request to repeal it. It has been the law for 4 years.

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The Republican leader is recognized.

Continuing Appropriations
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Mr. President, I want to start this morning with a point that is obvious to me but I think bears repeating: Nobody wants the shutdown. Democrats say they do not want it; Republicans certainly don’t want it. We all can agree on at least that. The question at this point is: How do we resolve the issues that truly divide us—that really divide us. The point I have been making all week is simply this: The only thing keeping the government from opening back up is the Democrats’ refusal to apply a very simple principle of fairness when it comes to ObamaCare: Let’s treat everybody the same. Let’s treat everybody the same. Basically, all the House is asking for at this point—they wanted a lot more, but all they are asking for at this point—is a level playing field when it comes to ObamaCare. That is about the only thing standing in the way of the government’s opening back up, and it is a pretty reasonable request. If Washington Democrats can’t agree to that, then can they at least join us in making sure that veterans programs are funded; that the Honor Flight veterans can visit the World War II Memorial, and that the National Institutes of Health can continue its research? Can we at least agree on that? That is just the right thing to do.

Those issues respond directly to the concerns a number of our Democratic colleagues have raised and it is the same thing this Congress voted to do a couple of days ago with the brave men and women of our military. I hope my friends across the aisle will reflect on the efforts of Republicans in the House and allow the Senate to quickly vote on all the bills the House sent us last night so we can get the government reopened as soon as possible.

That said, yesterday’s meeting at the White House, frankly, wasn’t particularly encouraging. The President basically called us all down there to tell us he is not interested in negotiating. It was essentially a negotiation about not negotiating. Now we hear he is off campaigning today in Rockville rather than sitting down to get this thing solved, which is certainly disappointing.

But here is the good news. A solution isn’t that far from reach. As I said, nobody wants a shutdown, so that is a good start. And it is hard to argue with what Republicans are asking for, especially after the embarrassing—embarrassing—rollout of the ObamaCare exchanges on Tuesday. I mean, one of the folks the President had standing behind him at the White House tried to log on and sign up for ObamaCare, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the Post reports she gave up—literally gave up. And here is the quote she gave afterwards: It is not so great.

Not so great? Some Americans might call that an understatement. You would think the administration would be begging for a delay after stories like that. So this should be easy. Congress gets treated the same way as everybody else on the ObamaCare exchanges and individuals get the same break the President already handed out to employers, the same break the President has already unilaterally given to employers. It is time for Democrats to start acting responsibly. It is time to work with us and find our way out of this mess.

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Under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved.

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Under the previous order, the Senate will be in a period of morning business for debate only until 2 p.m., with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the second 30 minutes, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

The Republican whip.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to engage in a colloquy with the Republican leader, the Senator from Missouri, the Senator from Georgia, if he wishes to join, and the Senator from South Dakota during the 30 minutes allocated to our side.

Is there objection?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I came to the floor—and I am happy to do that—but I was told there would be a unanimous consent request. If that is not the case, Senators can go ahead and do their colloquy, and when they want to do that I will come back.

Mr. President, for the information of the majority leader, and anyone else who is interested, there will be some unanimous consent requests. We will frontload those so the majority leader doesn’t have to stay on the floor more than maybe about 10 minutes, if that suits his schedule.

Is there objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Republican leader.

Unanimous Consent Request — H.J. RES. 72
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Mr. President, many of us were stunned this week to see the administration blocking the World War II Memorial. It was a reminder to all of us how much we owe the “greatest generation.” Last week the Senate unanimously agreed to ensure our troops are paid during the shutdown, and the President correctly signed it into law immediately.

Today the House will pass a bill to ensure our veterans—in fact, they have done that—continue to get the services and benefits they so richly deserve. If Democrats are unwilling to fund other parts of the government, at the very least they can agree to support our veterans.

As the Senator from Texas and the majority leader were just discussing, I have the first of these unanimous consent requests to propound.

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives, making continuing appropriations for veterans’ benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table.

Is there objection?

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, my friend notes that no one wants to shut down the government. Obviously, he didn’t listen to my statement. We have people who have been saying for days now—Republicans saying—they are glad the government has shut down; they have been waiting for this for years. I have quoted the Congresswoman from Minnesota who said that. Congressman Marlin Stutzman of Indiana tells us where the tea party is when he said: “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

So Republicans are throwing one crazy idea or another at the wall in the hope one will stick. They throw out one idea, then come up with another one. And then, I repeat, they hope something will stick on that wall, and they do not even know which wall they are throwing it on.

The latest plan came from the junior Senator from Texas, which is to cherry-pick parts of the government he likes. House Republican Leader Cantor admitted this strategy. According to the New York Times, this is what he said when asked: What about those cancer patients who need some help; what about the disadvantaged kids who want to return to their Head Start classes?

That’s coming as well. We are going to take every issue that has come up and put it on the floor.

He is following Senator Cruz’s idea specifically. Senator Cruz is now joint Speaker. He lectures the House on occasion, as he does people over here.

We support veterans and parks and NIH and all these different elements of government that are closed, but we also are not going to choose between veterans, cancer research, disease control, highway safety, or the FBI, and we are not going to give a blank check to the junior Senator from Texas to pick his favorite parts of the government on a daily basis. Today it is parks, tomorrow it is NIH, maybe later it will be something else.

Would the leader yield for a question?

I am happy to yield.

I simply wanted to follow up on what he said.

If we were to go along with these individual UC requests——

Regular order, Mr. President.

Is there objection to the request?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, here is the situation. The junior Senator from Texas wants to fund everything else, just not ObamaCare. Here is what one columnist said today—Dana Milbank from the Washington Post—and I will be quick; I know Senators have a lot to talk about here:

House Republicans continued what might be called the lifeboat strategy: deciding which government functions are worth saving. In: veterans, the troops and tourist attractions. Out: Poor children, pregnant women, and just about every government function that regulates business or requires people to pay taxes. Here are some of the functions not boarding—

Mr. President, is that an objection?

I will use leader time then, Mr. President.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

So if they are afraid to listen to the things I have to say, they should listen, because the government is closed, and it is closed because they have helped close it. So let’s not try to be technical here. I want to say something and I am going to say it.

Continuing the Milbank quote:

Here are some of the functions not boarding the GOP lifeboats: market regulation, chemical spill investigations, antitrust enforcement, work site immigration checks, workplace safety inspections, the Environmental Protection Agency ..... communications and trade regulation, nutrition for 9 million children and pregnant women, flu monitoring and other functions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and housing rental assistance for the poor.

Here is what else he wrote:

And that’s quite a list that the Tea Party is throwing out of the boat. We need to end the Government shutdown.

I say, without any reservation, that the key to opening the government still remains with the Senate-passed funding resolution that will open the government. We will talk about anything they want to talk about. We have said that.

I ask unanimous consent that their request be modified as follows: That an amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the joint resolution, as amended, be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

This amendment is the text that passed the Senate and is the clean continuing resolution for the entire government. It is something that is already over in the House and reportedly has the support of the majority of the Members of the House of Representatives, including at least 20 Republicans, and some report as many as 100.

Is there objection to the modified request?

I object.

Objection is heard.

I object to the previous consent.

Objection is heard.

The Republican leader.

Mr. President, with all due respect to my good friend the majority leader, he was speaking about the junior Senator from Texas, whom I don’t see on the floor at the moment. The request was made by the minority leader, the Republican leader of the Senate, and it dealt, quite appropriately, with veterans’ benefits. That was the whole purpose of the consent request.

I would repeat that I was the one who requested consent that we provide relief for veterans during this shutdown, and the person to whom his speech seems to be directed I don’t see on the floor at the moment. But with that, I know we are in the middle of a colloquy here, and the Republican whip has the podium now.

The Republican whip.

Unanimous Consent Request — H.J. RES. 70
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Mr. President, I want to raise as a preliminary matter under rule XIX of the Senate Rules, no Senator shall in debate directly or indirectly by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.

I want to remind all our colleagues that when they talk about Members of the Senate who are not on the floor and not here or able to defend themselves, I think if not the letter of the rule, certainly the spirit is in jeopardy of being transgressed, and I think we don’t want to head down that path.

I would point out that we have witnessed, with some dismay, many of our World War II veterans being turned away at the World War II Memorial here in Washington, DC.

A number of these Honor Flights come from my State. There will be one that comes here tomorrow afternoon. I intend to meet them and welcome them to Washington and visit the World War II Memorial with them.

These gentlemen and ladies are quite advanced in years, and for many of them—like, for example, my father-in-law who landed on Utah Beach on the second day of the Normandy invasion, his physical health is not such that he could come. But he would love to come to the Memorial.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I will not yield for a question at this time. I will at a later time.

He would love to visit the World War II Memorial. Unfortunately, his health is not such that he can. But those who can are coming to Washington. There will be one from Fort Worth coming on Tuesday, and I intend to meet them and to welcome them. They should not be turned back because of this politically concocted government shutdown—one that the President and the majority leader seem to be enjoying but which is causing a lot of hardship and inconvenience.

The House of Representatives has passed a separate piece of legislation that would open the World War II Memorial, along with other national park services. I would note it got 252 votes in the House of Representatives yesterday, including 23 Democrats. I hope it would enjoy the same sort of bipartisan support in the Senate.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of, making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations, which was received from the House; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Is there objection?

Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent that their request be modified as follows: That an amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the joint resolution, as amended, be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

I object.

Is there objection to the original request?

Mr. President, may I inquire. Did the majority leader object to my unanimous consent request or seek to amend it?

Objection has not yet been heard.

Is there objection?

I object.

The objection is heard.

Unanimous Consent Request — H.J. RES. 73
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Mr. President, I recognize my colleagues from Missouri and South Dakota, who I know also have unanimous consents, and I yield to them for those.

I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.

On Monday morning, I was scheduled to be at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, to look at some of their research. A lot of the research NIH does has been done in our State; one-third of the research for the human genome project was done in our State.

Then, on Tuesday evening, for the fifth year in a row, I was at the fundraising event for the Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, where families and children can stay while they are there for treatment. This is a private sector event. In spite of everything else that was going on, it was a great event where lots of money was raised for those kids.

I said at that event that somebody told me years ago that if everybody in your family is well, you have lots of problems. If somebody in your family is sick, you have one problem. The Children’s Inn is one of the places where people help families deal with the one problem they have.

But as virtually every Member of this Senate at one time or another has said, the work of the NIH is important. It is important that it continue. The House yesterday passed a House joint resolution that would continue that work.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of, making continuing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health for the fiscal year 2014; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Is there objection?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am going to make a counteroffer to the Senator from Missouri which is even better. It is going to open the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and all of the medical research at the Department of Defense. We are going to make sure all of the medical research and medical services of the Federal Government in every agency at every level are open for business immediately, and the Senator from Missouri, by agreeing to this modification, will go way beyond the National Institutes of Health. He is going to be opening all of these medical services.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the request be modified as follows: that an amendment which is at the desk be agreed to; that the joint resolution, as amended, then be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

This amendment is the text that passed the Senate, is a clean continuing resolution for the entire government, including the National Institutes of Health, and is something that is already over in the House and reportedly has the support of a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives. This is an opportunity for the Senator from Missouri to finally break down this government shutdown and put all the medical services of the Federal Government back in business immediately.

Is there objection to the modified request?

Reserving the right to object, I would remind my good friend from Illinois that there was a time when in the Senate we dealt with all of these issues individually—as we should have last year and didn’t. There were no appropriations bills on the floor.

A continuing resolution is not the best way to do the business of the country, and I would object.

Objection is heard.

Is there objection to the original request?

I object.

Objection is heard.

Unanimous Consent Request — H.R. 3230
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Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from South Dakota.

Mr. President, the men and women who serve our Nation in the Guard and Reserve shouldn’t be impacted by a partial government shutdown.

Recently, the House and Senate unanimously passed the pay our military first act, which was signed into law by the President this past Monday. That bill ensures that Active-Duty military and those who support them stay on the job regardless of the dysfunction in Washington. Congress was right and passed the legislation, and President Obama was right to immediately sign it into law.

Today, the House of Representatives is going to pass, the Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act. This bill provides funding to pay Guard and Reserve troops who are not currently on Active Duty. Although these men and women currently don’t have Active-Duty status, they have regularly scheduled training requirements. They stand ready to serve in overseas conflicts and to respond to domestic disasters if called upon by their country.

These men and women proudly serve this country, and they should not be impacted by spending disagreements in Washington. Today the Senate has a chance to give these individuals and their families greater certainty by passing, as soon as it is received from the House.

I am sorry to hear that the majority and the President have already indicated they are going to oppose this and that the President has threatened to veto this legislation. I can’t imagine that we would not do for our Guard and Reserve troops what we have already done for our Active-Duty troops. I think that is a big mistake.

So I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives, making continuing appropriations during a government shutdown to provide pay allowances to members of the Reserve components of the Armed Forces; that the measure be read three times and passed; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Is there objection?

Mr. President, I would ask the Senator from Illinois and the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense to respond.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am going to offer to the Senator from South Dakota an even better deal. Not only will we help the reservists, not only will we open the Veterans’ Administration, but out of the two million federal workers, 800,000 have been furloughed. There are over a half a million veterans in the federal workforce and a fourth of them are disabled. Now I am going to give the Senator from South Dakota an opportunity to put them all back to work immediately, including paying the reservists and everything he suggested.

I ask unanimous consent that the request of the Senator from South Dakota be modified as follows: that the amendment which is at the desk be agreed to; that the bill as amended then be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

This amendment is the text that passed the Senate. It is a clean continuing resolution for the entire government and will put thousands of disabled veterans back to work. It is something already in the House and reportedly has the support of a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives.

Is there objection to the modified request?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as the Senator from Illinois has already pointed out, that has already passed in the Senate. What he is suggesting is already in the House, not being acted on.

What the Senate can act on is legislation that is being sent from the House that would ensure that our National Guard and Reserve troops are treated the same way as our Active troops are treated. I think that is only fair and only fitting. These are people who not only respond to domestic disasters but are also involved in conflicts overseas on a regular basis.

So I would object.

The objection is heard to the modification requested.

Is there objection to the original request?

Mr. President, on behalf of the one-half million veteran Federal employees, one-fourth of whom are disabled, I object.

Objection is heard.

The Republican whip.

Mr. President, may I inquire how much time is remaining in our allocated time?

Thirteen minutes.

Mr. President, I grew up in an Air Force family. My dad served in World War II in the Army Air Corps, and as I have mentioned on this floor many times, he continued to serve for 31 years in the U.S. Air Force.

As fate would have it, he was transferred to Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan right after my junior year in high school. So I graduated from high school in Japan, and I became acquainted with this 17th century stylized form of drama and dancing called kabuki.

The thing about kabuki is that the audience oohs and aahs as the actors demonstrate their great skill at carrying out this stylized form of drama and dance. What we have seen on this government shutdown, contrived as it is, is a form of kabuki. We know exactly what is happening.

The Senate, under the majority leader, has turned down at least four—and now here today four more—proposals from the House of Representatives to try to mitigate some of the hardship as a result of their determination to protect the special congressional carve-out from ObamaCare—which was tabled the other day at the instance of the majority leader—as well as to deny average Americans the same opportunity the President has unilaterally given to employers to delay the implementation of ObamaCare for 1 year when it comes to the individual mandate.

That is what the majority has objected to. That is what the majority leader in a party-line vote has tabled, and that is the only reason we are engaged in a government shutdown—because of their refusal to accept those reasonable conditions from the House of Representatives.

So this is kabuki as we in America understand it. We all understand the dance. We understand this is a form of drama. But the problem is the American people are suffering either hardship or great inconvenience as a result of the unwillingness of the President of the United States to negotiate and the hard-line “my way or the highway” position of the majority party.

I ask my colleagues who are on the floor—both of whom served with great distinction in the House of Representatives—whether they believe the House has acted in good faith, whether they have tried to resolve this impasse by sending over to the Senate reasonable pieces of legislation which, if accepted by the majority, could break this impasse and reopen the Federal Government.

I ask the Senator from Missouri to respond first.

Let me say to my friend from Texas that until the leadership in the Senate changed to the current leadership 7 years ago, we always did appropriations by debating and advancing individual things.

The idea that we don’t want to debate anything if we don’t debate everything makes no sense. It is not the way the government should run.

I think the House is not only well intended but that their goal is a worthy goal. The House of Representatives, led by Republicans beginning in 1995, doubled NIH funding in 10 years. My good friend from South Dakota and I were there for the majority of that 10-year doubling of NIH funding.

Last year in the Appropriations Committee markup I voted for a bill that would add $1 billion extra to NIH funding. It was defeated in the committee. This year I voted for a bill that would add almost $1.5 billion of additional NIH funding.

This makes a difference in the lives of people. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of NIH, has estimated that each week there is a shutdown his agency’s research hospital would have to turn away an estimated 200 patients. He estimated 30 of those patients would be children.

I know they took the children and individuals who were coming Monday and Tuesday but are now beginning to notify people: If you were scheduled to come, we have 4,000 people working and 14,000 people not working. We can’t accept you right now.

I think this is the right thing to do. It is an easy thing to do, if we would just stand and do it.

If we do not oppose NIH—and I do not believe there is a Senator who does—why don’t we continue their funding and do it right now?

Mr. President, I heard the assistant leader on the Democratic side, the majority side, yesterday make what I thought was a very impassioned speech on behalf of access to research that is provided by the NIH for children who are suffering from cancer. I ask the Senator from Missouri, would the bill the House has passed and the Senator asked consent the Senate consider address the very same sort of cancer research for children the assistant majority leader was arguing for yesterday?

I was impressed by the comments of my friend from Illinois yesterday about NIH funding. I am for NIH funding. I have never failed to vote for NIH funding. Frankly, I have never failed to vote for an amendment that would increase NIH funding, as far as I know. I have seen it increase dramatically.

Opening the doors of that research facility is the right thing to do. We could do it today. I cannot imagine the President would not sign a bill that let three-quarters of that workforce go back to work and let the 200 people who will be turned away in the next 7 days be told instead: Come on, be part of this process. We are waiting for you. We are here. We are doing the kinds of things your family critically needs us to do.

I ask the Senator from South Dakota, I know South Dakota has a lot of uniformed military. The Senator has already addressed a piece of legislation that has passed the House and come over here. Is it the Senator’s impression that the House is trying to address some of the hardships—inconvenience in some cases, hardships in others—that are caused by the government shutdown? In his experience, are they being reasonable in demonstrating good faith in trying to break this impasse?

I say to the distinguished whip, the Senator from Texas, he is exactly correct. The House of Representatives has moved several pieces of legislation—and will this morning—that address some of what we think are the real needs out there in the midst of a very unnecessary government shutdown. Some of those have been mentioned here on the floor this morning. I would point out two in addition: taking care of our Guard and Reserve troops as we have our Active-Duty troops—it is really important. All of us have Guard units with families that have been impacted. The House of Representatives has given us an opportunity to do that.

The other thing I would mention, I spoke yesterday about President Obama’s refusal to open the World War II Memorial for veterans on their Honor Flight. He rejected their appeal to visit the memorial dedicated to their service, an opportunity to honor their brothers in arms, many of whom died in that great war. I am pleased that the veterans—not ones to be defeated—breached the barricades and took their memorial.

I have had the opportunity—my father is a World War II Navy fighter pilot—to be able to show him some of these memorials we have, monuments here in Washington, DC, particularly the one that was erected in honor of his generation.

They should not be denied the honor of visiting these monuments to their service.

When we are thinking about that generation of Americans, we had Senator McConnell put forward an opportunity today to address the needs of our veterans. We found out that even though the veterans budget is advance-funded by a year, there are certain elements of that budget that are going to run out of money. We want to make sure those of the great generation that served our country, defended our country around the world, have access to the programs and the benefits that have been assured and promised to them.

I think it is unconscionable, unacceptable that we not agree to allow those services to continue to be funded. I am very disappointed to see our colleagues on the Democratic side resist and object to that motion here this morning. If anything, if any group of people in this country deserves to have the respect and also the promises honored, the promises we made to them, it is those American veterans.

If we look at the last shutdown in 1995 and 1996, President Bill Clinton came to the table and supported legislation to protect veterans programs. I hope we could get some cooperation from our colleagues on the other side to do that today, I say to my colleague from Texas.

May I ask how much time remains?

Three minutes.

I thank the Senators from South Dakota and from Missouri for making very important points. I know the leaders—bicameral leadership of the House and the Senate—were called to the White House last night, at which time Senator McConnell, the distinguished Republican leader, reported here on the floor, the President announced he was not going to negotiate. Bizarre. Why would the President call the Republican and the Democratic leadership to the White House to say: I am not going to negotiate. Is it for a photo opportunity? Is it to give sort of some false impression that he is actually rolling up his sleeves and is engaged in the business of government to which he was elected?

I hope the President reconsiders leaving town while the government is shut down, in the words of the majority leader, and leaving for a trip to Asia while, as our distinguished Democratic colleagues just pointed out, many federal employees are furloughed during this government shutdown. My hope would be that the President would cancel his trip and that he would stay here in Washington, as we are, trying to solve this problem and break this impasse.

These proposals we have made here today, many of which have been voted on by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan fashion, are designed to do exactly that—to break this impasse. Yet what is the response of the White House to some earlier proposals? They sent out a Statement of Administration Policy saying: If it is passed, I would veto it. That is President Barack Obama. How is that rolling up your sleeves and being engaged in the job you got elected to? He earned it. He was elected twice as President of the United States. But it is not leadership to convene a meeting of Republican and Democratic leadership at the White House and say: I am not going to negotiate. And by the way, I am leaving town on Saturday. Good luck.

That leads me to conclude that the President and his party are actually enjoying this shutdown because they see this as partisan political gain. They read the public opinion polls, just as we do, but I do not think the American people should be fooled and they are not being fooled. House Republicans and Republicans in the Senate have made many reasonable proposals, only to be given the Heisman, and the President is not negotiating and the government remains shut down.

The President needs to stay here, demonstrate leadership, continue to meet with leaders on both sides of the Capitol, and we can break through this impasse, get the money for children’s cancer research, get the money for the troops, and open the World War II Memorial to the Honor Flights coming from Texas and around the country. We can do this. They call it self-government for a reason. We all ought to be working together toward that end.

The Republican time has expired.

Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa Program
Page: S7149

Under the previous order, having received from the House, which is identical to , the bill is considered read three times and passed. The motion to reconsider is considered made and laid on the table.

The assistant majority leader.

=== CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS — (Senate - October 03, 2013) Page: S7149

Mr. President, there are two sides to every story. Before he leaves the floor, I would like to say to my friend from Texas—and he is my friend—I was at the World War II Memorial yesterday with an Honor Flight from Illinois. There were no barricades stopping them from going to the memorial, so the characterization on the floor that the veterans were stopped is not true, it is not accurate. I hope the record will reflect that.

The reason there is any question about access relates to the shutdown of the U.S. Federal Government, the shutdown of this government. We have passed a continuing resolution, which is a spending bill, to allow the government to function for 6 weeks. We passed it here in the Senate. The House Speaker, Mr. Boehner, refuses to call it for a vote.

There is a majority, Democratic and Republican, ready to vote for it, ready to reopen the government, no questions asked about the NIH, about the barricades at the World War II Memorial which were there originally. All these questions will be resolved. Three times this morning the Republicans have objected to bringing that measure up for another vote in the Senate. That worries me.

Let me say one other thing about the Affordable Care Act, the insurance exchanges. This morning—I am sorry he has left the floor—this morning, this is what the Republican leader, Mr. McConnell, said about the insurance exchanges:

Embarrassing, embarrassing rollout over ObamaCare exchanges on Tuesday. I mean, one of the folks the President had standing behind him at the White House tried to log on and sign on to ObamaCare, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the Post reports, she gave up.

I have good news for the Senator from Kentucky. When you look across the United States of America at the exchanges that have been opened, he should hold as a matter of pride the fact that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is one of the most successful insurance exchanges in America. Listen to the report we just received this morning from the secretary of the Governor’s Cabinet for Health, Audrey Haynes, in Kentucky. The Kentucky insurance exchange, which the Republicans want to close down, has had 117,000 unique visitors, 109,000 prescreenings to determine qualifications for health insurance, and 13,000 Kentuckians—already, in 2 days—already 13,000 have applied for health coverage and 8,000 are now complete.

This is great news. They are leading the country. Kentucky should be so proud. Mr. President, 122 small businesses have begun applications, 3,500 new families have been enrolled, and there have been 15,000 calls to the call center.

Apologize that we have not been able to process these as quickly in any State, but the overwhelming positive public response across America to what they call ObamaCare is an indication of pent-up demand in Kentucky, Illinois, and every State for people to finally get access to health insurance.

I see others are on the floor to speak. I want to say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, please reopen this government. We can sit down and negotiate—we should—about important issues, the issues the Senator from Washington addressed in the budget. Let’s address all these issues. Let’s do it in a bipartisan, thoughtful, adult manner. Telling 800,000 Federal employees to go home is really unfair to them. It is unfair to this Nation. It doesn’t speak well of us.

The last point I will make is this. I left the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning. Wendy Sherman is Assistant Secretary of State. She is widely respected. We were talking about the threat of Iran as a nuclear power. She said to us—and she said it with some regret—that the government shutdown is hurting our efforts to stop the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. How? Ninety percent of the employees at the Department of Treasury office responsible for monitoring Iran so that the sanctions are there and tough and bring them to the bargaining table—90 percent of those Federal employees have been furloughed at the Department of Treasury because the government shut down; and 72 percent—almost three-fourths—of all the men and women at our intelligence agencies in a civilian capacity have been laid off as well because of the government shutdown. These are men and women charged with watching the enemy every minute of every day so we never have another 9/11. This is one of the aspects of the government shutdown that literally jeopardize the security of the United States of America.

For goodness’ sake, let’s put this government back in business before the end of this day.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Washington.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Illinois for reminding all of us of the many people and communities and the economy in this country that are being hurt today because of the tea party’s insistence, in the House of Representatives, that this government remain shut until ObamaCare is defunded or eliminated. I am frustrated, as is every American today, thinking why can’t our government work? Why can’t people come together?

As chair of the Budget Committee, I have been out here 19 times since last March saying: Let’s go to conference committee and resolve our differences, and 19 times Members of the Republican Party have said no. They have not allowed us to go talk.

Now we find ourselves in a mess. The government is shut down. Families are hurting and communities are hurting and our economy is hurting. What is the response now of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and here on the floor? Oops, we didn’t mean to hurt everybody. We have a few friends we are going to take care of.

I have listened to the debate this morning where our Republican colleagues came out and asked unanimous consent to take care of a few of their favorite parts of government so that they can say they helped. I am as passionate as anyone about our veterans. There is not one Member of this Senate who does not fully support our military and our veterans.

No one questions that, but I take a backseat to no one in advocating for our veterans—as the former chair of the veterans’ committee, as the daughter of a World War II veteran who earned a Purple Heart and was one of the first soldiers in Okinawa.

As a young woman myself during the Vietnam war, I worked in the Seattle veterans hospital with men and women my age who were coming home from the Vietnam war. I have done so much work on this floor, as well as worked with hundreds of thousands of our veterans who are coming home from the current conflicts, and helped to pass legislation to make sure they have what they need, so we don’t just say thank you, but we serve them well.

I take a backseat to no one on veterans. I can tell you one thing about our military and our veterans that everyone here knows: They are the least selfish among us. They have volunteered to serve our country. They have given up for every American, and they have a motto that they leave no one behind. I can’t imagine that our veterans are out there today saying: Take care of me with this small amendment and leave behind the children who are in our Head Start programs or the moms and dads who are dependent on nutrition programs in this country or the 800,000 employees who are sitting at home today scared to death about how they are going to pay their bills because this government is shut down.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to solve the problems in front of us. They are widespread in terms of our differences with our Republican colleagues, but we don’t do them any favors by shutting off, closing our arms and saying: We are not going to talk about it. We do it by going to conference, and we do it by working together. We don’t do it by shutting out the lights across this country on our government.

In front of the House today is a solution. It is the Senate-passed bill that is supported by a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate as well and would pass today if it were brought up. With that vote, we could open our government, put people back to work, and then we would go to conference, work out our agreements in the way our children expect us to do.

Let’s be an example as adults to families and young people across this country that when there is a disagreement, all parties involved work together at a conference table and set aside their differences and find a solution for the country. It cannot be done by saying: I’m not going to let anybody go to work until I get my way, which is what the House of Representatives is doing.

We can get this done. As I talked about yesterday, I am a former preschool teacher, and I have seen this kind of activity before. We have all seen our kids make a mess in their room, and then say: Gosh. How did that happen? That is what we are hearing from the other side today: Well, gee, how come we haven’t passed any appropriations bills? Wow, if we had a budget done, we wouldn’t be here.

Why has that happened? Because time after time—and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee is here—when we have tried to get our work done, we have been blocked by the very same tea party Republicans who today have put us into this shutdown and said: My way or the highway; either repeal ObamaCare or this country hurts.

That is not what we should be doing. Let’s tell our veterans, our military, our Head Start moms, our 800,000 employees, and everybody in this country: We are a country that can work. We are at work. Let’s open our doors, pass legislation in the House, and then we will work out our disagreements. As hard as it is, we can do that.

I hope that is the focus we have today. I say to Speaker Boehner: Bring up the bill, pass it, and allow us to get back to work.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in morning business. How much time remains?

Nineteen minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today in a twofold role. No. 1, I am here under my constitutionally designated responsibility as the Senator from Maryland, duly elected and duly certified. I love representing Maryland. We have 5 1/2 million of the most wonderful, patriotic, hard-working, philanthropic, community-oriented people you can have.

I also love representing Maryland because in my State we have one of the largest concentrations of civilian agencies in America. They have wonderful names such as the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology that helps to set the standards that enable the private sector to be able to develop the products they can sell around the world. We are home to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We are home to the Consumer Product Safety Commission that looks at a variety of things from children’s toys to the safety of our mattresses to make sure they are not flammable. I could go on listing those agencies: the Census Bureau, the National Weather Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which helps to keep the seafood industry safe and operational.

I have a lot of Federal employees, and they are asking me: What are they doing? What I am telling them is that the other side—one faction in one party in one House of government—is prohibiting a reopening of our government because of their failure to take up the Senate continuing funding resolution, which would reopen government for 6 weeks while we work out our fiscal problems.

Their solution is to do this piecemeal. Piecemeal does not work. We cannot do this one agency at a time.

Weren’t we proud of our World War II veterans and how plucky and spunky they were when they essentially broke the line to be able to see a memorial in their honor? Absolutely. When the National Park Service put that ban up around it, they were operating under the orders of what a shutdown is. Now, unofficially, that World War II museum is open. But while we say, aren’t we proud of our veterans—Yes. Don’t blame the National Park Service for closing the World War II memorial. Blame the others for shutting down government. Our veterans—who wanted to see the memorial which salutes them, the greatest generation who fought World War II—should not have to worry about their own government.

Then the other side says: Well, we are going to fund veterans’ benefits. We cannot fund veterans’ benefits without reopening Social Security and the IRS. I have looked and investigated and worked with my committee on why the veterans had a backlog for disability benefits. One of the ways claims are processed is they not only have to get what the veteran says, but they have to get paperwork from the Social Security Administration and from the Internal Revenue Service to be able to process the claim.

They can beat the drum, raise the flag, sound the bugle all that they want, to say they want to fund veterans’ benefits, but unless the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service are reopened, they are still placing our veterans at a disadvantage. We need to reopen the whole government.

While they are doing their piecemeal approach, they are so busy showing off and trying to show their pro-defending America stance—they passed a bill to make sure the military gets paid. Sure, what American would not want our troops in harm’s way to get paid? We are for that. But they were so fast and so facile and so showbiz, they forgot the National Guard.

Now they are coming up with a piecemeal approach to add the National Guard. I love the National Guard. We are the home of the fighting 29th. They were heroes in World War II, and they have been heroes in every war since then. I want to see the National Guard helped, but they are kind of Johnny-come-latelies to the piecemeal approach because in their fast-track, showbiz, showoff approach, they forgot the National Guard. Oh, wasn’t that a cool thing to do.

I support what Senator Reid just did on each and every one of those piecemeal bills, to add the continuing funding resolution to open all of government. Over the last few days we have shamed them into thinking about the National Institutes of Health. I love the National Institutes of Health. It is in my State. Every day people go to work there to find cures for the dread diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and autism, not only for the American people here but also around the world. In a few weeks we will be racing for the cure. Let’s race to open government.

In their disdain for civilian agencies, NIH was closed down, but now they are coming up with a piecemeal approach to reopen NIH. Do I want NIH open? Absolutely. Over 70 percent of the people who work there have been laid off. Last year NIH announced—because of its research and work with wonderful academic centers and our private sector to develop biotech and pharmaceutical products—that cancer rates in the United States were reduced by 15 percent. With all of that work, they have now been furloughed.

Some might say: Senator Barb, do the piecemeal. I would love to. But if NIH workers were here, they would say: If you reopen us, it is a hollow opportunity unless you open the FDA. We do the basic research at our institutes, but somebody has to take that research and make use of it in other medical devices, biotech products, or pharmaceuticals. They then go through clinical trials because in this country we want to be sure that whatever you put on your body or in your mouth to help you is safe and effective. The Food and Drug Administration does that.

We can do lots of research, and have brilliant ideas that could lead to new and credible solutions for people in pain, agony, and suffering, but unless we can put it into clinical trials and have it go to the FDA, it is a hollow opportunity. If we’re going to reopen NIH, we have to reopen the FDA. And guess what. The Food and Drug Administration is furloughed. We pay a good part of the FDA through fees, such as pharmaceutical fees and medical device fees. But guess what. During the shutdown, the government is prohibited from collecting the fees that it is owed.

What is this? This is showbiz politics. This is not pragmatic solutions.

We need to reopen government—reopen the entire government—so it can do the job we have authorized them to do, and have the men and women who do that job be able to come back to work. That is why Senator Reid has—instead of cherry-picking individual items—offered the comprehensive solution that would reopen our government.

This is not only affecting government workers because government workers actually affect the economy. Right this very minute, the President has been in Rockville, MD. I would have loved to have joined him this morning, but I wanted to be here at my duty station. The President was at Rockville Pike, which is a road in Montgomery County that has some of the greatest civilian agencies in the world clustered around it.

He was going to visit the Luis family. They are a minority, woman-owned asphalt contractor. They are a wonderful family and an American success story. They came to this country with just a little money in their pocket but with big dreams in their hearts to have freedom and the opportunity to open a business. They opened an asphalt contracting business which gets most of its business from local, State, and the government for roads. They are the infrastructure people. Not coming up with a way to keep our government open, cancel sequester, and move legislation to fund our physical infrastructure is dramatically affecting them.

Around Rockville Pike, there are several agencies, and I have already said their names: The National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

That is affecting businesses up and down Rockville Pike. People aren’t buying their groceries, they are not buying gas. I am going to say more about that in a little while.

Remember that Social Security agency I talked about? It is in a neighborhood called Woodlawn in Baltimore. Nine thousand—nine thousand—Social Security workers in Baltimore and around the country have been furloughed. Right near them is the CMS agency which also looks out for our Medicare.

A few blocks from Social Security is the FBI field office. Those FBI agents are on the job—on the job—but they are being paid with IOUs. Do my colleagues know that because of what we have had to do with our budget they don’t even have gas for the FBI cars? In a recent book called “Voices From The Field,” the FBI agents have spoken out about what is happening to them; that when they get in their car to chase a bad guy or gal, they have to pay for their own gas. What kind of government is this, with all that pomp and strut, the ridicule of our Federal employees? Now this shutdown is humiliating our country and humiliating the people who work for our government, and so on.

Across this Nation and in my own State, because of thousands of Federal employees being furloughed or paid in IOUs, businesses are hurting. I am the daughter of a small business owner. My father owned a small grocery store. I am the granddaughter of a woman entrepreneur—a wonderful woman of Polish heritage who opened a Polish bakery to be able to help her family. Every day they said, “Good morning, can I help you?” I know what it is like to be in the retail food business, and I understand what it is like when your customers are facing the fact that they are unemployed. All of these, mom-and-pop stores to the larger agencies, are being affected.

The government shutdown threatens our progress. We know in 1995 and in 1996, it cut our gross domestic product. The shutdown can cost our economy as much as $10 billion a week.

Every week the Small Business Administration, because it is shut down, can’t process loans or give technical assistance to small businesses. The International Trade Association, which helps our people sell products around the world—and what is left of our manufacturing sector in Maryland has told me how important our foreign commercial service officers are—is shut down.

The Department of Labor processes applications for visas, for farms, for seafood processors as in my own State. Businesses typically file for visas 2 or 3 months in advance. Because of the shutdown, it is going to affect everybody from citrus farmers in the South to those people who have New England ski resorts. People might say, Oh, that is a Gucci job. A Gucci job in a New England ski resort? I don’t think so. It is very important to Vermont and New Hampshire and the citrus farmers down South.

We have to reopen the government. The way we reopen the government is not by a piecemeal approach but by the House taking up the Senate resolution.

I have a lot more to say, and I will say it during the day today. I know my colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Reed, is on the floor. He is a member of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Defense authorization committee. He is a staunch defender of people. He has been so outspoken on the need for student loans. He has also been so outspoken on the need for energy assistance for poor people with the coming winter. He is a defender of America, a graduate of West Point, and he has been a defender of the little guy and the little gal who should have a government on their side. I want to make sure he has a chance to speak, and I will be back later on to speak on the floor again.

The Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. President, first let me commend the chairwoman for her extraordinary leadership in so many different ways, including her articulate explanation of the crisis we face at the moment and her compelling argument that a piecemeal approach to resolving the government shutdown will not work, since the pieces are so critically interrelated.

I rise to speak about this government shutdown as well. Today is day three of the Republican government shutdown, and it seems increasingly clear that Speaker Boehner is trying to drag this out long enough to merge the shutdown with brinkmanship over whether to pay our Nation’s bills. This attempt to gut existing law and put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk is no way to run a country. If we are dragged into the commingling of the Republican government shutdown and the Republican proposals to default on our debt, we could be facing a catastrophic financial situation that would affect not just government operations but markets worldwide, and that is not something we should even contemplate. So we have to move very quickly to a resolution of this manufactured crisis.

When I hear a discussion of what is going on, the words I hear used are words such as “reckless,” “irresponsible,” and, indeed, words much worse than these all across this country. The bottom line is the average American is fed up. They expect government to open, to serve them, to perform its basic function—not selective functions but its full range of functions.

Survey after survey notes two simple things: No. 1, the government should be reopened for business. No. 2, the effort by some to connect the Affordable Care Act to funding the government should be ceased. These aren’t the views of one particular political party; they are the views of a very, very large majority of Americans, and I share their sentiment. The government should not be closed. The Affordable Care Act should not be tied to reopening the government.

There is a very simple solution here: Pass the short-term, continuing resolution at current levels of spending so then we can begin the process of resolving the budget impasse. Let me say that again: Pass the bill that funds the government at the current level of spending. Doing so means keeping, in effect, the sequester—something that many on the other side of the aisle have demanded. Frankly, I would hope that having done that, we could then seriously get into discussions with the leader and with the chairwoman on our side about how we create a budget for 2014 that does away with the sequester. This was inherent in the budget resolution which I supported last March.

Regrettably, the tea party has refused to allow negotiations on the budget, even though we heard day in and day out complaints by our colleagues in a previous session of Congress that we need a budget, we need a budget, we need a budget. Well, we produced a budget, and now we are being blocked.

What is happening instead of moving to meaningful, comprehensive budget negotiations is that we are in a government shutdown, and now the Republicans are trying to extricate themselves from this manufactured crisis, created by their own hands, by sending over piecemeal bills to fund preferred and selected agencies of the government. As the chairwoman pointed out, it doesn’t work, because the government is related. NIH can make discoveries, but if the FDA is not authorized and operating so they can approve their use by people, it doesn’t work. We can’t disassociate these things.

We saw today in Rhode Island about 26,500 women and children might lose their WIC benefits, their nutrition benefits, their support. Ignoring them and helping others is not going to benefit this country. In fact, it will contribute, I think, to decline.

We have looked at the National Guard, veterans’ benefits, and national parks. Those are all worthy elements, but they are not the entire range of elements we must perform. I believe the other side is trying to come up with some type of coherent argument for their actions. Is this about the debt? We have made progress in reducing our deficit. Because of actions we have taken, we have reduced projected deficits over 10 years by $2.4 trillion. Do we have to do more? Yes. But we have to do it in a current, thoughtful way.

Is it about the sequester? Well, let’s talk about the sequester. Let’s talk about it in the context of a budget and appropriations bills for 2014.

Is it about the Affordable Care Act? Well, it has begun. There has been a huge demand in the first few days and it is working through problems. And there will be problems. There is no major initiative of this kind that is rolled out by any business or any government that doesn’t have issues, and those issues will be dealt with.

What is very clear, though, is closing the government and then, in sort of an ad hoc way, opening up parts is no way to operate. It is unfair to the American people who aren’t getting services they expect and deserve. Also, it’s unfair to furloughed Federal employees at the Defense Department and elsewhere—not just the Defense Department but all Departments—some of them are working without the certainty that they indeed will be paid.

There is a simple way to avoid this situation. The House should stop preventing an up-or-down vote on the Senate’s continuing resolution and open the government. The Speaker can call up that vote in less than an hour, get it on the floor, and go ahead and reopen our government. Then reopen the thoughtful, careful, collaborative discussions about where we are going in terms of our budget, in terms of our deficit, in terms of serving the American people.

I have heard a lot of talk such as: Oh, we have to have a lot of negotiations and compromise, et cetera. I have supported legislation I believe in strongly. I have opposed legislation, but I don’t think I have ever stood up and said it is either my way or nothing happens. That is not the way to responsibly represent the people of America. It is the give-and-take of principled compromise. Sometimes there is legislation that reaches this floor that I can’t support, but I think in a democracy it is the majority, ultimately—after we go through our procedural convolutions—it is the majority ultimately that prevails.

There is a strong sense, as reflected in the newspapers, that the majority of the House of Representatives wants this situation resolved. They want all government agencies opened. And through the procedural votes on this side, it is very clear that our colleagues were willing to allow a majority vote to come to this floor, which carried. So the majority of the House and the Senate are with the American people. We just have to get the leadership of the House to get with the American people.

We have to talk about some of these serious issues, but I think the best place to do so, in my view, is in the context of budget negotiations, and we have been repeatedly blocked from bringing the budget to conference. In fact, many of our Republican colleagues—and I will give them credit; many of them have stood up and said we have to go to the budget negotiations in the conference. Senator McCain said, for example, “It’s not the regular order for a number of Senators, a small number, a minority within a minority here, to say they will not agree to go to conference.” That is what is happening. It is happening in terms of a minority of Republican Members in the House who are demanding that this Speaker not relent on this government shutdown, and it is happening here to a degree with respect to the conference committee on the budget. We have to go ahead and do our job.

We have had colleagues on the other side talk about how the closure has detrimental effects. The Member who represents Yosemite National Park was very sad it was closed. I am also distressed that it is closed. I chair the subcommittee that appropriates funding for our national parks. We do our best to maintain the parks, to make sure we support those individuals who work for the Park Service. I understand the impact is not just within the confines of the park, it is the businesses all around the park. That is what we said a week ago. That is what I said a week ago, asking, in terms of our deliberations, that we pass a continuing resolution. So this should come as no surprise to those people who voted against keeping the government open.

But this is not just about the value of a national park. It is about all the functions the government performs. It is about those women and children who receive benefits through the WIC Program. It is about those Federal workers who are furloughed who cannot perform their duties. We have to go ahead and open up our government. We have to recognize what a democracy ultimately is all about: It is the will of the American people—the majority of the American people—that has to be reflected, ultimately, by the Representatives and the Senators.

Again, I think it is very clear, except for the bottleneck at the House leadership, that the majority of the House and the majority of the Senate want this government to open up. Let’s do it. We need a vote. We have to stop relitigating the Affordable Care Act. It passed. It was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. It is open for business starting on October 1, with significant interest by the public. There were 3,000 page-hits per minute in Rhode Island as it opened up on October 1, which I am told by the technologists is an amazing number. There were 2,000 calls to our call center—people who were looking for insurance, to buy it in a private marketplace, which is the core of the Affordable Care Act.

So we have to move forward. If we do not move forward, SBA lending is effectively cut off, so small business men and women, who are struggling to get their businesses going, to keep them going, and hire Americans, will not have that ability to receive support from the SBA.

We need, as they say—and everyone has become familiar with this term—a clean CR that opens everything up. If we do not, then we know the impact is going to be dramatic.

In 2011, economists estimated that a shutdown would cost the economy 0.2 percent of GDP each week. And it accumulates.

Looking back to 1995 and 1996, when a Republican House also shut down the government for 27 days, it reduced GDP growth by roughly 0.5 percent. Those are jobs, not just statistics. Those are lots of jobs and confidence in our economy. If we do not have jobs and confidence, then we are not doing our job and we are not fulfilling what we were sent here by the people to do: grow the economy, give us work, give us confidence that you can at least perform the basic functions of government.

Now we have to move forward. I am uncertain as to how long this will continue to fester. We should do this immediately. As I said, procedurally the House—and I had the privilege to serve there for 6 years—can bring this continuing resolution up on very short notice and get, which I believe they have, the majority votes they need to pass it. That should be done. Then we can sit down and work again—work hard on those issues that face us in the context of budget negotiations and a conference and also recognize that while we are here involved in this manufactured crisis, the world is moving. The world is moving in ways in which we cannot be so preoccupied that we do not sense: foreign affairs issues in Syria, foreign affairs issues across the globe; international economic issues; future competitive issues with other economies. While we are fixated and focused on this manufactured crisis, which is completely unnecessary, we are not doing the important work, we are not anticipating the problems that are developing right now in the world or in our economy, we are not investing in jobs and in job creation, we are not looking ahead. We have to do that also.

I would urge a quick, decisive vote on a continuing resolution so we can get back to the business of leading America.

With that, I yield the floor.

The Senator from Connecticut.

Madam President, let me second the very powerful and eloquent remarks just made by my colleague from Rhode Island: that we must vote, we need to have a vote in the House of Representatives to give moderate Republicans the opportunity to put the Federal Government back to work in the service of Americans and keep America—in the private as well as public sector—at work so they can meet the obligations of their families.

We have developing a situation in America where more and more the ripple effects of this shutdown will affect private employees, not just the Federal and government workers who are told to go home and told they cannot do their jobs.

As I have said repeatedly, we need to end the hostage-taking tactics by one small faction of one party in one House of this branch of government. The ripple effects of this shutdown are beginning to grow across America.

Last night, United Technologies, the largest employer in Connecticut, announced it has been forced to furlough thousands of employees, starting initially with more than 1,500 at its Sikorsky facility in Stratford, which makes Black Hawk helicopters for our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Special Forces. Thousands of other jobs may be at risk at Pratt & Whitney and at defense manufacturers all cross the Nation.

This political gamesmanship and budget brinkmanship has stopped production of the Black Hawk helicopters, an iconic symbol to all our serv�ice�mem�bers that help is on the way. They are the ones that transport troops into combat, rescue the wounded, and deliver supplies to the most inaccessible and inhospitable parts of the Earth. Black Hawk helicopters are vital to our national defense. Why is the production line at Sikorsky being shut down? Because 45 Federal employees who work for the Defense Contract Management Agency have been sent home as a result of this shutdown—sent home by one small group of rightwing extremist ideologues in the House of Representatives, one part of this Congress, one branch of the government—and those 45 employees who work for the Defense Contract Management Agency cannot certify and inspect the work of the Sikorsky employees. So there is no way the U.S. military can take delivery of those helicopters.

My hope is this situation can be resolved quickly and that we can find a way to get these DCMA employees back doing their vital jobs that contribute so directly and importantly to the success of our military operations. They are civilian employees. They should be back at work

certifying and inspecting and making sure those helicopters are the best in the world, as they have always been, and that they can be delivered to our military; that the military can pay Sikorsky, and Sikorsky can keep its people at work rather than furlough them, and so that those Sikorsky helicopters are available to help our troops in the toughest challenges they face all across the globe. They need and deserve those helicopters.

But even if we put those Sikorsky workers back at their jobs tomorrow, the needless chaos and confusion caused by the shutdown is an outrageous and inexcusable dereliction by those small, rightwing extremists who have insisted on ideology over country and fearmongering over job creation.

The ripple effects of Sikorsky shutting down its assembly line will be felt by the suppliers who provide parts and components used in those helicopters. I have visited them, and I have seen those parts and components used on those assembly lines by those Sikorsky workers. If Sikorsky is not using those parts and components, workers in those suppliers will be furloughed as well, or worse.

We are talking about men and women who live—many of them—paycheck to paycheck. They do not have huge savings. They may well, in fact, probably will not be paid for the time they are furloughed. The ripple effect on consumer demand will be felt across Connecticut and, as a result of similar situations, across the country.

All too often, we tend to think of the Federal workforce as a nameless and faceless group, but this shutdown is bringing home what the real impact of their work is—from the NIH employees who do cancer research and provide treatment to people who need it and now will go without it; to the Head Start workers and programs across the country that provide for educational readiness to children who now will go without it; to the Social Security recipients who encounter problems with their check or payment and need someone to guide them or help them receive those checks that they need to survive and now will go without those checks; and resolving veterans’ benefits, other kinds of issues all across the country. The chaos and confusion will ripple and accumulate. These effects are cumulative, and they will multiply.

The damage done by these wounds to our workforce are, tragically, self-inflicted and they dramatize how that cumulative effect will, in fact, increase exponentially.

I warned of the effects on job creation and economic growth repeatedly before and after the shutdown occurred. In addition to the vital services that are imperiled and impacted, these economic effects on job creation and recovery are irreparable. They affect people’s lives. They are real consequences to real people.

I have called on this body to let compromise and cooler heads prevail and end those ripple effects, end the shutdown, end this self-inflicted wound before it becomes an economic tsunami.

I hope everyone in this body, everyone in this Congress, will use every ounce of their energy, every minute of this day and the days to come to cause this inexcusable shutdown to end, to fix the train wreck before it leads to other wrecks of other trains that may collide.

We have spent a lot of time in this body talking, and it is time we started listening. We ought to be listening to the American people, who are telling us: Get the job done. Get back to work. We ought to be listening to voices of our local communities which are seeing the harm of this shutdown.

Jim Finley, for example, the CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said yesterday:

Our poorest communities. They’re the ones who are going to feel the hit first.

That is because the Women, Infants and Children’s Program and housing vouchers for low-income families are just two of the programs that make the social safety net work and help people most in need. The WIC Program provides food assistance to more than 58,000 low-income pregnant women, mothers, and children in Connecticut.

Listen to Mayor Pedro Segarra of Hartford, who said:

After 30 days it becomes very difficult. We’ve already been under pressure from the feds because of sequestration to reduce expenses in several categories.

Recently, Newtown and Monroe, along with other Connecticut communities, received Federal grants to hire local police officers. So listen to Monroe First Selectman Steve Vavrek, who said he has no idea whether that money will ever arrive, and he has no way of checking on it, and, of course, he has no way of planning for future law enforcement in his community.

Students from Sandy Hook Elementary School were relocated to a school in his town of Monroe. Let’s listen to those kids. Let’s listen to their parents. They have no one to speak for them here, unless we listen to them.

Similar to children across the country, they need those Federal grants for their schools. If we listen to our local leaders, if we listen to America, we will put the Federal Government back to work. We will avoid that train wreck and tsunami that will result from the spreading ramifications and ripple effects of the loss of income and service that results from this shutdown.

Finally, let me just emphasize one of the very important unintended consequences of actions that we have taken or failed to take. When Congress passed the resolution to pay our troops, we intended to cover all of the men and women who wear the uniform, all who serve in our military forces, including all categories of National Guard service.

Unfortunately, some are not covered in actual practice. I am committed to ensuring that everyone in uniform is paid for their service and sacrifice. Regardless of the numerous diverse categories of service that may exist in the National Guard or in other branches of service, every man and woman who wears the uniform, every man and woman who serves in our military should be paid and paid on time now.

I am committed to making sure our Department of Defense and our government recognizes that obligation. So let’s think about them. Let’s keep in mind the brave men and women who are serving and sacrificing to keep us free, to make sure our democracy functions in the service of people. Let’s keep faith with them as well as with the American people. Let’s do our work by making sure we put the American Government back to work and make sure the country is at work. Let the House vote.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Utah.

Unanimous Consent Request — H.J. RES. 72
Page: S7154

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate receives, making continuing appropriations for veterans’ benefits for fiscal year 2014, the measure be read three times and passed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Is there objection?

Reserving the right to object, Madam President, my understanding is that the Senator is proposing to allow for appropriations to move forward for a portion of veterans funding. Let me just say a few things. It is clearly a hardship that the shutdown is going to result in a diminution of benefits to our veterans. I appreciate the Senator coming to the floor to try to address that today.

But as my colleague from Connecticut just mentioned, it is also an unacceptable hardship that there is about to be 4,000 workers at Sikorsky Aircraft who are going to be furloughed on Friday because of this shutdown. It is also an unacceptable hardship that thousands of Head Start children are going to show up to their preschool being closed. It is an unacceptable hardship to millions of frail elderly who are going to have their nutritional benefits compromised.

So I think we can all agree that the consequences of the shutdown are unacceptable to our veterans. They are unacceptable, though, to a panoply of other families and individuals across the country.

I would note also that I believe the resolution the Senator is offering and suggested be passed provides only partial funding for the VA. There is no funding here to operate the national cemeteries. There is no funding for the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. There is no funding for constructing VA hospitals and their clinics. There is no funding, actually, to operate the IT system that the entire VA needs in order to continue going forward.

So I would actually offer and ask unanimous consent that the Senator’s request be modified; that an amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, that the joint resolution, as amended, then be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

This amendment is the text that passed the Senate. It is a clean continuing resolution for the entire government and something that is already over in the House and reportedly has the majority support of the Members of the House of Representatives. This would solve the problems I am sure the Senator is going to talk about with respect to certain veterans but would also solve all of those other problems and would make sure we continue to have funding for the national cemeteries, continue to build hospitals that need to be built for veterans, continue to service the IT needs that underlay the foundation of our veterans systems, and also make sure Head Start kids do not get turned away from their classrooms, make sure Sikorsky Aircraft workers get to go back to work, make sure our food still gets inspected, we get meals to our frail elderly.

The CR is in front of the Senate. If the Senator would agree, I propose we move forward with this modification to his request.

Will the Senator from Utah so modify his request?

I object to the proposed modification.

Is there objection to the original request?

Reserving the right to object, I just want to say I so strongly support my colleague from Connecticut. I so oppose what is going on here with the Republicans. Time and time again they have had a chance to open this government, and they say no. We have the votes in the House. The Senate passed it. We sent it over there. Let’s make sure we do what is right for the people. That means opening this government. We show up to work. We have two things to do to earn our pay; one is keep the government open. Just because people are going to get health insurance and it bothers some Republicans, sorry you lost that battle 3 1/2 years ago and then in the election.

So we have to keep the government running, and we have to pay the bills that we all incurred. They are threatening chaos. I am so appreciative the Senator from Connecticut came down and gave another chance to our Republican friends to let them join us and do our job.

Is there objection?

Again, the Senator having rejected my offer to modify his consent—we have an opportunity to pass a continuing resolution which enjoys the support of the Senate, which reportedly enjoys the support of the majority of Members of the House of Representatives should the Speaker simply call it. We could solve the problems the Senator is about to talk about, as well as all of the other problems presented to the people being affected today by the shutdown, if we would just move forward with a clean continuing resolution with no political riders attached to it.

For that reason, I object.

Objection is heard.

The Senator from Utah.

Madam President, what we are being told by the majority is that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. Moments ago, I proposed a unanimous consent request that if approved would provide for the immediate availability of mandatory funds generally controlled through the annual appropriations process for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I thank the Republican leader for making similar requests earlier today and other Republican colleagues for joining him. I look forward to making other similar requests in the coming hours. Frankly, I am a little stunned at some of the things we are hearing from the other side of the aisle. It is difficult for me to understand the objection to bills the House passed last night and the ones Senate Republicans are trying to pass today.

First, this legislation does not fund anything that is controversial. None of the pieces of legislation being worked on and passed by the House right now and last night can be considered controversial. These bills provide funding for things such as veterans’ disability benefits, the GI bill, and cancer research. These bills keep our national parks open and they make sure our National Guard personnel get paid.

There are many things on which Republicans and Democrats do not agree, but whether to take care of our veterans should not be among those things. Second, the President himself has asked Congress to do this. I remind my friends exactly what he said a few days ago, speaking to what might happen during a government shutdown.

He said:

Office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed. Vital services for seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung ..... Veterans who’ve sacrificed for their country, will find their support centers unstaffed ..... Tourists will find every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed. And of course the communities and small businesses that rely on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out of customers and out of luck.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives took the President of the United States at his word and started acting immediately to draft bills that would make sure these priorities received funding. In response, Senate Democrats have said this plan to fund things such as veterans, national parks, and others was fundamentally unserious. They said Republicans were playing games. The biggest head-scratcher of them all, the President issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things he said he wanted to fund, that he would like Congress to fund.

It makes me wonder, why is it that the President of the United States and the Democrats in the Senate are having such a hard time taking yes for an answer. The fundamental objection, as I understand it, has been that because these bills, passed by the House of Representatives last night, and those being passed today, within the next couple of hours, because those bills do not fund everything, they are objectionable; in other words, we have to fund everything or we may fund nothing.

I have to remind my colleagues that normally, under regular order, Congress will vote on and ultimately approve a dozen or so separate segmented appropriations measures, making sure we address each year within our Federal Government what it is that we are spending money on. This is a big government, one that expends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year. It is appropriate that we break this up into pieces.

But over the last 4 1/2 years or so, we have been operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing. So what this proposal does, what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are quite wisely doing is saying let’s start with those areas as to which there is the most broad-based bipartisan consensus, and let’s keep government funded at current levels, as the continuing resolution would do within those areas, and let’s build consensus and let’s start funding the government in those areas where there is not significant objection.

What I do not hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to what it does fund. What I hear is they are objecting to what it does not fund. So let’s pass those things we can agree should be funded, and let’s move forward. I think we can get most of this resolved fairly quickly.

Two of the bills in the House of Representatives that have been passed in this fashion have, quite significantly, received substantial bipartisan support. I expect that the rest of them will receive bipartisan support as well. In the middle of an unfortunate government shutdown, surrounded by all of this diverse rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats came together in the House, overwhelmingly, to approve these bills. I think we owe it to the country to show we can do the same in the Senate, acting upon the advice of our better angels and acting in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation to keep our government funded.

Fourth, this is a path forward that was first introduced by none other than the distinguished majority leader himself. On Monday afternoon, Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, the Senate majority leader, asked for unanimous consent to pass a bill that ensured our Active-Duty military would be paid in the event of a shutdown. In a matter of minutes it was done.

So I ask my friends across the aisle: Was Senator Reid playing games? Was that unserious? We did that then. Monday, just a few days ago, we passed something that did not fund everything, but it did fund something. It funded the government to the extent necessary to allow us to continue paying our Active-Duty military personnel.

Was that unserious? Well, of course not. Why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans’ disability payments, cancer research, or our National Guard?

Why is it all of a sudden trying to play games trying to keep our national parks open?

What exactly has changed since Monday? Why can we come together to pass a bill funding military pay but not to fund veterans’ benefits?

Finally, none of these bills has any connection to the implementation of ObamaCare.

I understand that my friends across the aisle support that law despite its numerous failings and indications that it is harming the American people and the economy, that it is hurting jobs and threatening the affordability of health insurance.

I understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect that law.

We are going to continue to have that debate about that law, especially in light of all of the problems people are having signing up with the exchanges, not to mention the ongoing problems of job losses, wage reductions, hours lost, and people losing their health coverage because of ObamaCare. Especially in light of all of those problems, we should continue having that debate, but that debate isn’t essential to every aspect of our government’s funding.

Let me be clear. We will do everything in our power to protect the American people from the harmful effects of ObamaCare. That fight will most certainly continue.

My friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as I am sure they will. But none of these bills, none of the bills that we are considering today relate in any way to the implementation of ObamaCare.

For this moment, at the very least, we should focus on keeping our promise to the people, those who have sacrificed the most to keep this country free.

I applaud the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. I applaud the Republicans and the Democrats who have supported legislation to help keep our government funded in these critical areas. We can come together if we act in a step-by-step process, if we pursue a step-by-step process for funding our government.

It more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating in the first place. This is the best way forward. It is the way to help minimize the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of this unfortunate shutdown.

The Senator from Virginia.

Madam President, I rise to talk about the need to reopen government—and not to reopen government in a piecemeal way, one bit this week and then another bit next week, which seems to be the newest gambit on the table. We need to reopen the government because the government of this country should have never shut down in the first place.

Few States are feeling the impact of the shutdown more than Virginia. I wish to tell two stories, a personal one and then a story about one community in my State.

In my State many Federal employees live in Virginia. About 150,000 Federal employees are jeopardized currently by the shutdown, and 70,000 of them are DOD civilians who were already furloughed earlier this year. One of the employees who is jeopardized is a major in the Air Force Reserve by the name of Eric Ryan. He lives in northern Virginia, is married, and has four children.

Eric had a distinguished career in the Air Force, retired, became a civilian, rejoined the Air Force Reserve, and is currently working at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon as a civilian, he is currently furloughed with a wife and four children to support.

Eric is a Presidential Management Fellow and has been loaned to my office for a period of time. He showed up at the Pentagon Tuesday to get furloughed, and then he came to my office to hear me deliver my furlough speech to all of my employees. He got the double dose that day.

This afternoon I have the honor of going and participating in the promotion ceremony for Eric Ryan from major to lieutenant colonel. I am going to talk about him and his qualifications, but it is going to be a bitter moment for all of us as I engage in that promotion for this wonderful person. He first served this Nation by flying dozens of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves the Nation in a new way, but has now been furloughed twice this year, once because of the sequester and next because of the shutdown. We have tens of thousands of veterans such as Eric Ryan who are going through the furlough experience.

The second is a community story. If you were to ask where in Virginia would you feel the impact of the sequester, I think most people might think the neighborhoods around the Pentagon or Hampton Roads, where there is naval power. But the effects are being felt everywhere.

I wish to speak about one community, Chincoteague, the barrier island off the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the subject of the famous children’s book, “Misty of Chincoteague.” It is beautiful community, a tiny small town.

Chincoteague’s economy is fundamentally about visits to the national seashore, Assateague and Chincoteague Islands. But those parks and national resources have been closed.

I got a call Tuesday morning right away from friends in Chincoteague saying: Chincoteague is motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and people who sell suntan lotion and sunglasses. Because of the closure, the entire economy has had its guts pulled out during the Federal shutdown.

Moreover, there is a historic lighthouse at the wildlife refuge that has been restored. It has taken 6 years to restore. This week was the opening and celebration of the lighthouse. They expected visitors to come from everywhere. That has been cancelled.

Chincoteague has one other industry that is very important. They didn’t only want to be about tourism, so over the last 15 to 20 years they have worked to build up the capacity of NASA at Wallops Island, which is 5 miles from Chincoteague Island.

Kids who graduate from high school and are interested in science and math don’t have to move away and never come home. They can get a science and math degree, come back, and work as rocket scientists. Eighty percent of the NASA employees at Wallops near Chincoteague have been furloughed as a result of this shutdown.

The experience of Col. Eric Ryan, who works in my office, and the experience of this small community on the Eastern Shore of Virginia demonstrates how serious these effects are.

The good news is we can solve this if Speaker Boehner would only allow a vote to reopen government.

The Presiding Officer knows this because we sat through it together. It bears a little bit of repetition.

The Senate passed a budget on March 23 that funds all of these issues at the level that the Senate thinks is right. The same week the House passed a budget funding government at levels they think is right.

Under the Budget Control Act of 1974, the right strategy at that point was to put the two budgets in conference and let conferees figure it out. For folks who aren’t familiar with it—and there may be some who are listening—a budget conference is a pretty simple thing.

When I was Governor of Virginia, we had them all the time. The two Houses would pass different budgets. Each House takes their budget, goes into the negotiating room, sits down, and compares. One side wins on this issue, one side wins on the other, and on a third issue they might split it 50-50. The House budget and the Senate budget are very different.

But that is what we do. We sit down, listen, dialogue, compromise, and we solve the problems of the country. Nineteen times since March 23 we have stood on the floor of this body and said we want to go to conference with the House on this budget. Nineteen times, the last of which was yesterday, a small handful of Senators—and that was the phrase that the Senator from Utah used once on the floor in blocking this: We are a small handful of Senators—and the House Republicans have blocked a budget compromise.

For the last 6 1/2 months we have not had the opportunity to sit down and dialogue. For folks who don’t know how a budget conference works, if, in a conference a compromise is reached, it doesn’t just become law like that. The compromise has to come back to both Houses. Both Houses debate the compromise, both Houses vote on the compromise, and everyone’s interests are protected. They can look at the compromise and decide whether they like it or don’t.

For 6 1/2 months we have been blocked in an effort to go to budget conference. Imagine our amazement. In this body on Monday night, after the House shut down government, 3 hours later they passed a bill and said: We have an idea. Let’s have a conference. Finally, 6 1/2 months after they shut down government. But let’s have it be a really particular kind of conference, not a conference about the budget of the United States. Let’s have a conference about whether the Government of the United States should be open or closed.

I know I can speak for my colleagues who are here. Our view is we will negotiate, compromise, and listen to any policy issue. Budget negotiation is exactly how you do this or policy debates are how you do it. But what none of us in this body or in the House should ever negotiate is whether the United States exists or not, whether it is funded or not, whether it is open or closed.

I believe it has to be open. That is essentially what our oath of office says we have to do when we say we will faithfully discharge all the duties of the office to which we have been elected.

We also won’t negotiate whether the United States should pay its bills because the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in Section 5 makes very plain that the public debt of the United States and its validity shall not be questioned.

There is a way forward here, and it is such a simple way forward: that is, Speaker Boehner needs to allow a vote in the House. It is simple. Allow a vote and not only allow a vote, but allow a vote on a budget number that he has already agreed to.

The continuing resolution the Senator from Connecticut talked about that is currently pending, funds government for an interim period of time at a budget level that was the House’s number. It is not a number I liked. We had a different number in the Senate, a higher number we want to fund it to. But we accepted the House’s number for the short-term spending bill out of a spirit of compromise.

We sent it back to the House and we said: We are compromising. We are not even going 50-50. We are compromising by accepting your budget number. This is not as if the Senator from Utah said we want to fund everything or nothing, no. We have other things we would like to fund that we are not funding in this bill because we accepted everything the House wants to fund in their CR.

They only need to accept yes for an answer. The good news is this is not a partisan issue because many Senate Republicans want to do exactly what I am suggesting.

Based on current reports in the House, there are numerous House Republicans—four of whom are from Virginia—who are publicly on the record. They wish to do exactly as we are suggesting.

Speaker Boehner, bring your own spending bill up for a vote. If you do it will pass. If it passes, government will reopen. Once government has reopened, we can have a budget conference and talk about any issue the House wants to talk about, any issue that we want to talk about. But it is time to end hostage politics and reopen the doors.

The Speaker has it in his hands to do that, simply and immediately.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Montana.

Madam President, people all around this country—and Montana is no exception—are looking at the actions in Washington, DC, and they are shaking their heads in disbelief. They are shaking their heads in disbelief because the government has shut down, but yet a bill has passed the Senate. If the Speaker of the House would offer it on the House floor, it would pass the House and the government wouldn’t have to be shut down.

Then all the resolutions put forth on the other side, and some on this side, quite frankly, about opening different areas of the government, would all be settled because government would be open.

A previous speaker this morning said: We shouldn’t be dealing with overall government. We should be dealing with this in piecemeal fashion.

Really? Who determines who gets help and who determines who doesn’t? The fact is the government provides some pretty essential services to folks across the board. To stand on this floor and cherry-pick certain pieces of the government to fund and not to fund is totally unfair. Quite frankly, those groups know they are being used as political pawns in this process.

We started out these negotiations with a CR that was at $1.58 trillion. We compromised that down to a point of $986 billion, somewhere around a $70 billion reduction. This is real money, a significant compromise.

The House came back and said: No, that is really not good enough. We want that $986 billion figure, and then we also want to defund the Affordable Care Act.

Why? Because, my goodness, it is the most terrible thing. There are all sorts of reasons given on the floor why the Affordable Care Act is so terrible.

For example, I had a flat tire on my truck last week—it was the Affordable Care Act. I ran out of fuel in my fuel tank—that doggone Affordable Care Act.

Let’s get the Affordable Care Act implemented and all of these bogus excuses about why it is so bad will go away. People will get the advantage of affordable insurance once again, not government health care, but affordable insurance so they can afford to get sick.

Aside from that, the repeal of it was turned back. Then they came back with a delay of 1 year and said: Oh, by the way, if you work for Congress or you are a Member of Congress, we are going to take away any sort of insurance benefits you get whatsoever.

This was interesting.

Because, quite frankly, if Members of Congress don’t want that benefit, they will turn it back, and I anticipate some will after the Affordable Care Act is put into place. I doubt that very much.

Instead, what happened was we turned that back, and now we are in a situation where we sent back a clean continuing resolution at $986 billion. In the House, if the Speaker would put that bill on the floor, it would pass and we could start doing the business of this country once again rather than sitting here in a government shutdown where things aren’t working and we are not addressing the issues that need to be addressed.

But when we take a look at whether we are going to fund certain programs, I want to talk about a few very briefly before I kick it over to the Senator from Colorado.

We have intelligence folks who are not on the ground, but we have folks fighting in theater right now who need that intelligence. Whether they get it is up in the air. The folks who protect our clean water and air are off the job. Clean water is our most important resource, and they are not there to make sure it remains clean. Kids on Head Start, food inspectors, research into energy so we can have a 21st-century economy and affordable energy in that 21st century—they are all off the job. Domestic violence and folks who are impacted by domestic violence—there are shelters that are determining right now whether they will turn away those victims of domestic violence.

The list goes on and on and on. Whether we are talking about the Centers for Disease Control or we are talking about logging and salvage sales or talking about allowing wells to be drilled in the Bakken—that has all stopped. Why? Because of a Speaker of the House—who, by the way, a previous speaker just said they were very proud of. But why has it stopped? It is because of a Speaker of the House who doesn’t have the internal guts to put this on the floor and let it pass the House of Representatives. That would put this country back to work so we could start doing the things we need to do in the halls of the Senate and the halls of the House that are important for this country, whether it is the farm bill or housing reform or a defense authorization bill—the list goes on and on. Instead, we are dealing with a totally self-inflicted crisis supported by people who want to shut this government down. Regardless of what they say on this floor, they are very happy because this government is shut down.

It is time, Members of the House of Representatives, that you demand that the Speaker put that bill up so you can vote on it and we can get back to doing the business of this country.

With that, I yield the floor.

The Senator from Colorado.

Madam President, I would like to first say how much I appreciate the words of the Senator from Virginia and the words of the Senator from Montana. They are known to be commonsense people, to work in a bipartisan way day after day in this Congress, against all odds, to actually try to make something work around this place. So I thank them for their leadership and their comments this morning.

For 4 years I have come to this floor at about this time of the year and talked about how Washington has become the land of flickering lights where the standard of success is not how we are imagining the future and what we are doing for the next generation of Americans but that we are managing, after a little bit of aggravation and hostility, to keep the lights on for 1 more month or for 6 more months. Well, this time we are not the land of flickering lights. The lights are out in Washington. They have managed to shut down the government.

No mayor, no school superintendent, no city council in Colorado would threaten the shutdown of their government over politics. Whether they are a Democratic mayor or a Republican mayor or a tea party mayor, we wouldn’t stand for it in Colorado. They certainly would never threaten the credit rating of their community over politics. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. We just had these terrible floods in our State, and people are struggling to do everything they can to keep their governments open to provide people who have been displaced by the flood, who have lost everything they own, the services they need.

This shutdown is already hurting the U.S. economy and Colorado’s economy, and it is not surprising why. There is a lot of rhetoric around this place about uncertainty and the damage it does to our economy. Nothing could create more uncertainty than shutting this government down and threatening the credit rating of the United States by saying: We are not going to pay our bills. We have an ideology that is so far outside the mainstream of American political thought that we can’t find a way to actually win elections that align with our ideology, so we are going to use these kinds of tactics to bring this government to its knees.

The AP reported that the U.S. and European stock markets fell yesterday as investors and world leaders worried about the threat to the global economy. According to the Denver Post, the shutdown may cost the United States at least $300 million a day in lost output during a 1-week shutdown. What good is that doing anybody? How is that helping any American? Economists have estimated that a 3-week closing would cut economic production by 1 percent. It would cut our GDP by 1 percent. How does this self-inflicted wound help anybody?

In Colorado, to be clear, just as in the other States we have heard about today, it is not just the families who rely on Federal programs or Federal workers who are suffering because of this shutdown. The Denver Post reported that in a neighborhood near the Denver Federal Center, Rick Koerner, who owns Stack Subs sandwich shop in Lakewood, estimates he has lost about 5 percent of his normal business since the shutdown began on Thursday. He says he can’t afford to lose any customers because, in his words, “it’s a thin-margin business to begin with.” How are we helping him? In the same story, Deborah Giovingo, who owns a restaurant called Paradise Cove on West Alameda Avenue, just east of the Federal Center, said she is also witnessing a loss. “We’re not getting our regular lunchers. I think they’re really trying to conserve their money.” Right now, how are we helping these people?

One city perhaps hardest hit in our State is Colorado Springs in El Paso County. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the furloughs at our military bases include more than 1,000 workers at the Air Force Academy, 400 workers at Schriever Air Force Base, 2,200 at Peterson Air Force Base, and 700 at U.S. Northern Command. At Fort Carson another 1,000 workers are off the job. Is our job more important than their job? Is the job they do to protect this country, to defend this country, less important than the job of these elected representatives in Washington who are still taking a salary? I don’t think so. Are these jobs less important than the people who are actually in theater right now in Afghanistan? I don’t think so.

After 1 week of shutdown, the WIC Program—the Women, Infants, and Children Program—will have no funds for clinical services, food benefits, and administrative costs. Roughly 100,000 women and children in Colorado participated in the WIC Program last year and will lose their benefits.

The shutdown will delay SBA loans for Colorado’s small businesses. Last year SBA processed 1,300 applications, for a total of $559 million in loans, and they are on the ground right now, thank goodness, working with people who have suffered through these floods.

Our national parks, wildlife refuges, and recreational lands—major drivers of Colorado’s economy—are closed. They are shut down. Approximately 13,000 people visiting national parks in Colorado will be turned away each day this government is closed. It will result in nearly $800,000 of revenue a day for our local communities, which are already suffering because of the floods. Estes Park is one of the towns that have been terribly affected, and this is one of their peak times of the year for tourism because of the changing leaves. They are losing that opportunity, and we are making it worse because the government is shut down.

Thousands of Federal employees are out of work during this economic recovery. There is a delay in Social Security services. There will be a delay in veterans’ benefits by the end of October. Colorado is home to almost 400,000 veterans. That is almost 10 percent of our State’s population.

At risk is the funding for Head Start agencies and the Export-Import Bank’s support for small companies.

But what is just so insulting at this moment is that we are trying to recover from this flood. The recent flooding damaged at least 17,000 homes and other structures, several thousand of which were outright destroyed. Millions of dollars’ worth of public infrastructure has literally been swept away. More than 200 miles of Colorado roads and at least 50 bridges have been damaged or destroyed. Nine Coloradans lost their lives in the floods. The floods consumed an area of Colorado that is twice the size of Rhode Island. The devastation defies belief. Houses have been leveled and reduced to piles of debris, and some of these communities lie in ruins.

FEMA has pledged to go to great lengths, and they are working very hard to ensure that crucial disaster response and recovery services are not interrupted. To be clear, so far, emergency funds are still flowing and emergency workers are still in place. They are doing a phenomenal job, and I want to say on this floor, on behalf of everybody in Colorado, how grateful we are for their work. FEMA is going to make sure this work gets done, but nevertheless a number of FEMA employees—both based in Washington and at the FEMA Region VIII office headquartered in Denver—are vulnerable to furloughs if this shutdown continues.

Our economy is recovering in Colorado, and we are being led by innovative businesses that have been growing jobs despite the dysfunction in Washington. This year I visited many of them—companies that, in the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression, were actually creating jobs by inventing our future. That is what innovators do, and that is what Coloradans do. We are letting them down profoundly here by failing to exercise our most basic responsibilities as legislators, as people who receive a salary from the taxpayer. They do not send us here to shut it down, they send us here to improve it. They send us here to come to agreement and to compromise and to imagine a better future for our children and for our grandchildren. That is what we are here to do.

Instead, a very radical faction in the House and some of their colleagues here in the Senate have shut this government down in support of an ideology that, as I mentioned earlier, is far outside the mainstream of American political thought. They are entitled to their opinion. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But they are not entitled to shut the government down if they don’t get what they want, and that is where we find ourselves.

It has been a privilege for me to work in this place, and the moments I have enjoyed the most have been the ones where we have worked in a bipartisan way, with colleagues on the other side, to dramatically improve the way the Food and Drug Administration works so that new drugs could be approved more quickly and so that the 600 bioscience firms in Colorado that came to me and said they could no longer raise venture capital because it was all going to Europe and Asia because of uncertainty with the FDA and to please help them fix that—with Republican colleagues, we were able to get that done.

In working the immigration bill we passed, with the Gang of 8—four Democrats and four Republicans—we solved each other’s political problems to bring a product to the floor that actually could pass with nearly 70 votes—a supermajority of the Senate—and we still need to pass that bill in the House.

That bill, in stark contrast to the government shutdown we are going through right now, actually will drive GDP growth. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that immigration bill adds 3 points of GDP growth in the first 10 years and 5 points in the second 10 years.

By the way, at a moment when these people are saying they are shutting the government down, mostly because of the health care bill but also because of their concern about a growing government and widening deficits, the immigration bill reduces the deficit by $900 billion over a 20-year period. That is real money even in Washington, DC. They could be passing that bill over there. Instead, the government is shut down, and it has been a catastrophic failure of leadership that has brought us to this place.

I have absolutely no doubt, from all the press reports I have read and what I hear from my Republican colleagues in the Senate, my friends in the Senate who are Republicans, that if Speaker Boehner put on the floor of the House the Senate version of the so-called continuing resolution, it would pass with a broad majority of Democrats and Republicans, and the American people would cheer because that is what they want. They want us working together. And the standard of success needs to be something greater than that we kept the lights on, which in this instance we haven’t. We haven’t even done that.

What is the signal we are trying to send to this complicated world in which we live by shutting this government down? Why is it that people here get away with things that no local elected official would ever get away with?

So we have to continue to fight to get this government open. We are going to have another fight to make sure that, for the first time in the United States, we don’t fail to pay our bills and blow up the full faith and credit of the United States—which is one of our most important assets, right up there with the rule of law, right up there with our capitalist economy. From our founding, the full faith and credit of the United States has been a bulwark for us.

But once we get past that, what we need to fight for is the next generation of Americans.

That is why we have been sent here. Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, that is why we are here. And they are waiting to see whether we are willing to be the first generation of American leadership to provide less opportunity—not more—to the people that are coming after us.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The Senator from Connecticut.

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Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the period of morning business for debate only be extended to 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, the Founding Fathers set up a system of government which intentionally made social change in this country hard to achieve. They set up a pretty complicated legislative process with an innovative bicameral legislature in which you have to get the exact same bill with the exact same text passed through two different Chambers. They set up courts that could overturn those laws if they didn’t abide by the Constitution. They set up an office down the street in the White House with a veto power that could cancel out actions of the majoritarian legislature. Then they built in pretty frequent elections so that if people didn’t like what happened here, they could change the composition of the legislature to try to get something different to happen. So I imagine that is why it took 100 years since Teddy Roosevelt first proposed that this country make a commitment to universal health care that we actually got here. All the while, we watched as every other industrialized nation in the world decided that the compassionate thing to do was to make sure people didn’t die because they didn’t have enough money to get into the health care system, and they committed themselves to universal health care while the United States sat on the sideline.

What happened is a couple years ago when, after 100 years of debate and consternation and gridlock, we finally made a decision as a nation to move forward with a health care reform bill that finally puts us on the road to guaranteeing that everybody in this country at least gets some basic access to health care, no matter how much money you have in your wallet or pocketbook. What happened is the system was literally crashing down around us. We finally woke up to the reality that we were paying twice as much for health care as any other country in the world and getting so much less—not only in that there were tens of millions of people who were sitting on the sidelines, but also in that the outcomes we were getting weren’t good enough for the amount of money we were paying.

Finally the American public sent Members of the House of Representatives to make a change. They elected Senators determined to make a change. They elected a President who campaigned on making a change. So in 2010, we overcame the barriers that had been set up by the Founding Fathers to major social change. Both Congresses passed that health care law. Two years later, it was upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional. Later that year, in 2012, President Obama ran on his support of the law and his promise to implement it and was elected by a wide margin. I would note, every single Senator here who voted for it and stood for election got returned to the Senate.

But despite all of this—despite the fact that after 100 years of debate, the democratic process produced a health care reform bill that expands coverage to millions of Americans and lowers the cost of insurance for them, despite the fact that it withstood all of the challenges that can come to a major reform like that—including a constitutional challenge, including the question being put to the electorate again after the law was passed in 2010 and 2012—despite all that, Republicans have been coming to the floor of the Senate and the floor of the House saying we have got to shut down the government because the people don’t want this health care law to be implemented.

And that is why they are doing this right now—because they know this is their last chance to try to get this law repealed. This law, which has already saved millions of seniors money, which right now as we speak is saving families thousands of dollars as they sign up for these exchanges, they know this is their last chance to get this bill repealed because it is about to go into effect, and all of their ridiculous arguments about how the sky is going to fall once this reform is implemented will be proven untrue. So Republicans come down here and say the American public wants this delayed.

First, let me make the point that my colleagues have been making all day: This is not the place to have that conversation. The people of this country do not support the government being shut down over Republicans’ objection to the healthcare bill. There is no way this place can work if every single person adopts a “my way or the highway” approach, if it is a condition of running the government for just 6 weeks—which is essentially what we are arguing over here—that we have to get everybody’s particular political points solved.

I get it the Republicans don’t like the health care bill. But I come from Newtown, CT. I don’t understand why we can’t agree that before you buy a weapon, everybody should get a simple criminal background check. That is as important as anything in the world to me, coming from where I do. But I am not conditioning my support for the operation of the Federal Government upon Republicans agreeing to support me on background checks. And I bet I feel just as strongly about background checks, coming from a State which witnessed that kind of slaughter, as any Republican believes in the repeal of the health care law. But that is not how I am going to operate, nor is it how any other Democrat is operating.

When I listen to people say, well, neither side is willing to negotiate, we don’t have anything to negotiate over, because all we want is for the government to be operational. We are not attaching any conditions—no conditions, zero conditions—to the government coming back and operating. The only party attaching conditions to the operation of the Federal Government is Republicans. This isn’t a negotiation. We just want the government to be back open for business, with no extras.

But I am OK to have a debate on what the people think about the health care law.

I don’t think it should be: Well, we have the government shut down. I don’t think there should be a gun to our head involving the paychecks of thousands of both government and civilian employees as well as the safety of our Nation and of our food and of our water and of our air. But let’s have that debate. Polls are going to tell you people are still kind of divided as to whether they like the particulars of the law that we passed to reform our health care system, but they do not want it repealed. In fact, one of the most recent polls I looked at, which has been consistent with most everything I have seen, said that only 33 percent of Americans, just 1 out of 3, want the law repealed or delayed or defunded. By a 2-to-1 margin, people want the health care law implemented because they get that the current system is totally broken and they want a chance to try to fix it.

Second, by absolutely astounding, overwhelming margins the American people oppose the tea party’s attempt to shut down the government unless the health care bill is repealed. Those numbers are even bigger. It is not 2-to-1, it is more like 3-to-1 or 4-to-1. The most recent Quinnipiac University poll said the American public opposes Republican efforts to shut down the Government over the defunding of the health care law by a 72-to-22 margin. And of course the next hostage that Republicans are going to take is the full faith and credit of the American government because they are not going to raise the debt ceiling unless they get a whole other set of conditions agreed to, and guess what. The American public does not want that either. By a slightly smaller margin of 64-to-27 percent the American public says pay your bills. Don’t put a bunch of conditions, a bunch of political riders on just paying your bills.

When Americans fill the gas tank, they put their credit card in and pay the bill. They don’t fill the tank and drive away, which is essentially what we would be doing if we agreed to a budget and then refused to pay the bills we incurred.

Third, beyond the polling on the specific repeal or delay, beyond the polling on the shutdown tactics that Republicans are using, do you want to know what people think of this health care law? Then just look at what happened over the last 48 hours after these exchanges opened. The volume at healthcare.gov continues to be astronomical. Even today on I think the third day of implementation, 6.1 million unique visits in the first 24 hours; 190,000 calls into the HHS call center; 104,000 Web chats were requested.

I think the estimate is that about 15 million people are going to sign up for either the expanded Medicaid portion of the law or private insurance through the exchanges in the first year or so; 15 million are going to sign up over the entirety of the first year. On the first day, 6.1 million people went to check out whether they are going to get a better product. It is going to take a little while for all those people to sign up, but if 6 million people are just showing up on the Web site on day 1, admittedly shutting the thing down for a little while and making the Web site slow down significantly, that tells you people out there are desperate for cheaper insurance. And they are going to get it.

I saw someone who was quoted in the paper who looked at the rate they were going to get in the exchange versus what they were paying and they called it a “pocketbook changer.” This changes people’s lives. Not only will they get insurance for the first time but to the extent that today people are paying 20, 30, 40 percent more than they may have to pay on the exchange, that helps them and helps our economy because that money goes right back out into Main Street.

Mr. President, 6.1 million people went on the site in the first 24 hours because all of these sick people or parents with sick kids who have been waiting their entire lives to be able to get health care finally get it, because on the exchanges insurance companies cannot tell you “no” just because you are sick. I hate to tell my friends on the other side of the aisle but there is an enormous amount of really sick people out there who have been getting sicker because they cannot afford to go to a doctor. Why are there 6 million people showing up on the Web site on day 1? It is because there are a lot of people in trouble, in dire straits, who want insurance.

The reason there is a flood of interest in these exchanges is because people want cheaper and better health care and they are sick and tired of waiting around for it. But what they are even more sick and more tired of is this place playing games with life and death, because that is what this is to people out there. If they get access to health care, then they have a chance at a quality life. If they do not, they are going to get sick and a lot of people are not going to make it.

We should fund the Government, get it back up and operating. Speaker Boehner has the votes to pass a clean continuing resolution in the House tonight, today. He should call it up for a vote. He can pass it. We can pass it. The government can get back up and operating and then we can have a debate about whether people in this country want the health care law implemented. It may be that people from a certain Senator’s State or a certain congressional district may have different feelings. But the people of this country, both in the polling and in their response to the first 3 days of its implementation, have made it perfectly clear: They don’t want this place to play games with the operation of the Federal Government. They do not support the tea party shutting down the Federal Government over their political beliefs and they want access—for the first time in many of their lives—to affordable health care.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Are we under a 10-minute time limit? Is that correct?

The Senator is correct.

TRIBUTE TO ERIK FATEMI
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Mr. President, Erik Fatemi, the clerk of my appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, is leaving the Senate this week after 12 years of sterling service. On behalf of Senators from both sides of the aisle who have had the good fortune to work with Erik over the years, I would like to take a few minutes to express our gratitude.

Knute Rockne was probably the alltime great coach at Notre Dame, and he knew that the Almighty had a special feeling for that team. But Rockne was fond of saying: “I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.”

Successful committee chairs in the Senate have the same approach. We know that it is not enough to be on the side of the angels; we have got to have big players. Here in the Senate, that means big intellect, big heart, big work ethic. And those are qualities that Erik Fatemi possesses in superabundance.

Erik joined my Appropriations staff in early 2001, a few months before Senator Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to Independent, giving Democrats back the majority in the Senate. So Erik has been in the minority with me, then the majority, then back to the minority, and now in the majority again.

Over the years, Erik has acquired a profound knowledge of the appropriations and legislative processes that is widely respected not just by Members and staff in this Chamber, but also in the administration. And with Erik, it’s not only a matter of know-how, it is also a matter of know-who. Over the years, Erik developed important relationship of trust and respect, especially with top researchers and institute directors at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health since 2009, recently said about Erik: “Erik Fatemi stands out in my mind as one of the most effective staff members I have worked with on Capitol Hill. Erik is the exemplar of an effective appropriations staffer: he has always mastered any of the issues he’s been involved in and he has always demonstrated the ’passion for anonymity’ of a loyal staff member. An expert on NIH, Erik has always been tough, fair and compassionate. He always asked the tough questions and would not give up until he got straight answers—wether it was from the NIH or the broader biomedical research community. And in all of his dealings with NIH and me, he has always kept uppermost in his mind the millions of patients and their families who count on the treatments, cures, and preventive measures that publicly-funded biomedical research makes possible. Throughout his career, in his dedication to his boss, Tom Harkin, and in his commitment to patients and their families, Erik Fatemi has been a superb Appropriations staffer and a model public servant.”

As notable as Dr. Collins praise is, I long ago lost track of the number of times people have thanked me for things that Erik played a huge role in getting done. Let me mention a few of his many accomplishments.

One signal achievement of my time as chair of the Appropriations subcommittee was collaborating with Senator Arlen Specter to double funding for the National Institutes of Health over a 5-year period. Erik played a very significant role in making that possible in 2001, 2002, and 2003—and that is something that he can be very proud of.

In the late 2000s, I was chief Senate sponsor of the Stem Cell Enhancement Act, to remove the administration’s arbitrary restrictions on stem cell research and Erik was my lead staffer on the bill. With Erik’s invaluable assistance, we passed the Stem Cell Enhancement Act twice in Congress with large bipartisan majorities. Unfortunately, the bill was also vetoed twice by President Bush. And do you know what. That is about the only thing that can stop Erik Fatemi: A veto by the President of the United States. The good news, of course, is that we ultimately prevailed, with President Obama’s executive order in early 2009.

During and after the great recession, Erik took the lead in identifying and responding to the impact the downturn could have on our Nation’s education system. He illustrated for me and other Members of Congress the devastating impact educator layoffs would have on our children’s education and our Nation’s future. The historic Recovery Act and the later Education Jobs Act kept hundreds of thousands of teachers and other educators in our schools, and Erik helped me shape the debate and passage of those critical laws.

Erik played a key role in the creation of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at NIH, which is accelerating the pace of getting new cures and therapies to the patients who need them.

He also oversaw production of the 2012 report “Under Threat: Sequestration’s Impact on Nondefense Jobs and Services.” This was the first comprehensive State-by-State projections of the destructive impacts of sequestration on nondefense discretionary programs.

All of these accomplishments amply demonstrate Erik’s skills and talents as a top Senate staffer. But Erik is more than that. He is the quintessential humble public servant who works long hours on behalf of this institution and the people of the United States.

Let me cite just one aspect of that humble service. Over the years, Erik has spent countless hours explaining to thousands of constituents and advocates what was happening on Capitol Hill at any given moment. I can’t imagine how many times and to how many audiences he has patiently explained how the legislative process works, especially the arcane and sometimes bizarre workings of appropriations.

As a Senator, I have always appreciated that when Erik couldn’t tell my constituents the answer they wanted to hear—which, unfortunately is most of the time, especially these last few years—he would respond to every question and e-mail promptly and honestly. In dealings with Erik, people always know that he is listening and taking their concerns seriously.

Finally, I also want to express my appreciation to Erik’s family members, especially his wife Alisann and their beloved daughters, Caroline, Kathryn, and Anna Christina. They, too, have sacrificed as Erik has spent many late nights and weekends toiling in the Dirksen Building. It was not easy to experience those absences, but I hope you realize that Erik’s work has made a powerful difference for the American people.

Erik, I join with the entire Senate family in thanking you for your outstanding service. We wish you, Alisann, Caroline, Kathryn and Anna Christina much happiness in the years ahead.

Continuing Appropriations
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Mr. President, more and more interesting figures are coming in to my health committee from around the country with regard to what is happening around the Nation in terms of the health care marketplace, ObamaCare. The Republicans said it was going to be a failure and all that kind of stuff and how it was going to cost so much more money. I do not have it for every State. It is starting to come in. But I have it for some States and I want to give this body and people watching some of the initial figures that have come in on the savings to families. For example, in Alabama, $2,013 premiums for a family of four—median premium for month. This is just the average, take the median. In Alabama, for a family of four this year the premium was $557.58 a month. We now know the marketplace premium, family of four making $50,000 a year with the tax credits, their monthly premium will be $112 a month, a savings of $445.58 a month for a family of four making $50,000 year in the State of Alabama.

In my State of Iowa, that median premium per month for a family of four this year was $549.58. The marketplace premium for that family of four at $50,000 with tax credits is now $103 a month, for a savings of $446.58 per month for that family of four.

I was looking at Oklahoma. Their median premium this year was $684 a month. The marketplace premium for that family of four—again, $50,000 a year—with their tax credits, believe it or not, is $63 per month. They will go from $684 to $63 a month. Those families will have a savings of $621 a month in the State of Oklahoma.

The median premium per month for a family of four in Texas this year is $504.50. Their marketplace premium for a family of four making $50,000 a year, after the tax credits, $57 a month, for a savings of $447.50 a month. It is an amazing savings.

Many of these people are getting insurance for the first time. Many of these people may have had a preexisting condition or perhaps they worked in a job that did not give them health care coverage or perhaps they simply couldn’t afford $500 a month in Texas, but now they can afford $57 a month and get coverage for their family of four, and they will get a subsidy for buying that marketplace insurance.

Is this what the Republicans want to stop? Is this what they want so desperately to stop that they are willing to shut down government? They ought to talk to some of these families in Texas, Iowa, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Michigan.

The premium for a family of four in Michigan is $381 a month this year. In the marketplace it will be $80 a month.

Georgia’s premium for a family of four is $448 a month this year and will go down to $132 a month under the marketplace. That is what the Republicans want to stop? Well, I think we are seeing that what the Republicans really wanted to do was to keep the same old system we have where health insurance companies call the tune, you pay the price, and if you couldn’t afford it, tough luck, go to the emergency room. Now we are going to cover all Americans.

More and more information will come in, and as it comes in, I will take the floor to give more and more information about the call centers. Right now—in the last 2 days—over 7 million Americans have visited healthcare.gov to get more information on what they can do to sign up. Again, the marketplace call center—these are calls, not the Web site—received over 295,000 calls since midnight on October 1. The wait time has been cut in half so now the wait time is only 2 minutes. The wait time is only 2 minutes if you call in to the call center.

Again, I want to repeat what I said yesterday—and I know the majority leader said it this morning—about the dangers of continuing this government shutdown. I quoted a Congressman from Iowa who said in Politico:

We passed the witching hour at midnight last night and the sky didn’t fall and the roof didn’t cave in.

Is that what has to happen? Does the sky have to fall and the roof have to cave in before we do something? I pointed it out yesterday, and I will point it out again today: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is closed down. Why is that important? Well, we are now in the flu season. More than 200,000 Americans are hospitalized due to the flu each year. In a mild year 3,000 people will die from the flu, and in a severe year that number could rise to 50,000.

The CDC monitors which strains are circulating around the country and which communities are being hit the hardest. They are the ones who look at how to contain it and keep it from spreading. They are not doing that now because they are shut down.

Food safety: Twelve days ago, 162 people in 10 States became ill with hepatitis A because of eating frozen berries. Right away the CDC got on the job, sent their epidemiologists out there, tracked it down, isolated it, recalled it, and found out it was pomegranate berries from Turkey. Well, 162 people got Hepatitis A, but nobody else did. CDC is not out there doing this now because they are shut down. That was just 12 days ago.

What if we have another outbreak of food poisoning? How fast will it spread? How many people have to get sick? Is that what this Congressman from Iowa is saying, that we have to have more people get sick? Is that what he means when he says the sky hasn’t fallen or the roof hasn’t caved in?

In August, cyclosporine infected 643 people from a salad mix. It started in my home State of Iowa. They immediately called the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC got on it right away and found that this salad mix was sent to 25 States. They recalled it all, traced it to salad that had come from Mexico, and they stopped it.

How many people have to get sick? Do we have to have a West Nile virus, hepatitis, e. coli, or a vast outbreak of the flu virus before they say: Well, that is enough, I guess we can start the government up again. It is totally irresponsible to say: Well, we can shut down the government because the sky hasn’t fallen and the roof hasn’t caved in.

Members of Congress are getting their paycheck. They are coming to work every day. We are here and we are getting our pay. How about all of those government workers who work on our staffs, on our committees, and run the Senate? They are good, hard-working public servants, and they are out of work and not getting a paycheck.

I have staff people who don’t make a lot of money. They have families, a mortgage, and maybe a car payment to make, but they don’t have any money coming in. If they wanted to go to the credit union here to get a bridge loan to get them through the crisis, they can’t because the credit union is shut down. Now where do they go? Do they get the money from their credit card? I say to the Congressman from Iowa that for these people the roof has caved in and the sky has fallen.

There are thousands of Head Start kids who will be sent home from Head Start this month and working parents will have to find something else for them. What are they going to do? For them the sky has fallen and the roof has caved in. Don’t we care about them?

I mentioned Social Security too. Social Security will still take your claims and your application for a Social Security card, but that is it. You won’t get it because the backlog is backing up. They will take it, but they won’t process it.

I mentioned that 445,000 people call their Social Security office every day in this country. They will not get an answer now. There are 180,000 people who visit a Social Security office every day in this country, but they can’t now because they are closed. They lost their Medicare card or Social Security card or they need a new Medicaid card.

There are 22,000 Americans who file for retirement benefits every day and 12,000 apply for disability benefits. They can still apply, but they are not going to get any help. For them the sky has fallen and the roof has caved in.

What is this Congressman saying, that the sky has to fall on him and the roof has to cave in on him before he will do something to help open the government? And to hear them talk about it—a representative said “this is about the happiest” she has been. This is a Congresswoman from Minnesota. “This is about the happiest I’ve seen members in a long time,” she said.

“We are very excited,” said Representative Michele Bachmann. “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”

Shutting down the government is exactly what they wanted and they got it.

“It’s wonderful,” said Representative John Abney Culberson of Texas, clapping his hands to emphasize his point. “We are 100 percent united.”

So this is where we are. The tea party group in the House is happy to shut down the government. It is the happiest they have been, they said. They want this discord, disunity, chaos, and confusion. The American people don’t want that.

The American people don’t want to turn their back on ObamaCare either because they see that now they are able to get coverage. Even if they have a preexisting condition, they can get a good rate for themselves and their families which they could not get before.

Now it is time to open the government again, put people back to work so we can meet our responsibilities to the American people.

I call upon Speaker Boehner to take the continuing resolution that is sitting over in the House now—it is a continuing resolution that will open the government. He says we wouldn’t negotiate. We already negotiated because before that we had one level of spending in the bill, they had a lower level of spending, and we agreed with them. We took the lower level. We took the Republicans’ level.

All he has to do is bring that to the House floor and it will pass in the next 10 to 30 minutes. It will pass, and then we can open the government so people can get back to work. The Centers for Disease Control can get their people back out in the field. The National Institutes of Health will open once again. Head Start kids will be able to stay in their Head Start Programs. The Women, Infants, and Children feeding program will be able to get the necessary nutritious food for poor kids and kids who are homeless.

All Speaker Boehner has to do to end this is to bring that bill on the floor. He doesn’t even have to vote for it. Congressman Boehner doesn’t have to vote for it. Just throw it out, and I will bet that enough moderate Republicans and Democrats will vote to pass it. I challenge him to bring it out. Let’s see what happens. That is the way to end this debacle right now.

With that, I yield the floor, and note the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

The Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I have been informed that I spoke incorrectly a few minutes ago when I said the credit union was closed. I guess one office is closed someplace, but another office is open and they will take calls. So I guess the office in the Hart Building is still open. I guess another office someplace else is closed. So I spoke incorrectly.

But I will continue to make this point: Isn’t it a shame that our staffs, who work hard, have to go to a credit union to borrow money to get them through this period of time, to meet a mortgage payment or a car payment or whatever it is? We don’t have to do that; we continue to get paid while we are here.

Again, in response to the remarks that, well, the sky hasn’t fallen and the roof hasn’t caved in, according to this Congressman from Iowa, for someone who now has to borrow money, even from a credit union—I belong to the credit union—for someone who has to borrow money from the credit union, it is just not right. This is simply not right and another reason why we have to call off this government shutdown, which, as I said, we could do in the next few minutes if Mr. Boehner would just put on the floor the continuing resolution he has over there and let his people vote on it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. President, we are now 3 days into a completely unnecessary, completely avoidable Republican shutdown, and there is more talk than ever about the inability of our leaders to find common ground on central, economic, and fiscal issues of our time.

This government shutdown is throwing a major wrench into a fragile economic recovery. Nearly 1 million Federal employees are sitting at home for no reason, and other public servants are working but not earning a paycheck. Cancer patients are being turned away from clinical trials at the NIH. Veterans’ benefits are at risk. Basic nutrition services for pregnant women and new moms will be disrupted. Small businesses won’t be able to get Federal loan guarantees. And all this is happening on top of the idiotic sequester—drastic, across-the-board spending cuts that have crippled Meals On Wheels, Head Start, and investments in medical research.

We all know how we got here. For years now we have heard a small minority in this country rail against government. When I hear the latest tirades from some of the extremists in the House, I am struck by how vague these complaints are. From their rhetoric, one would think they believed that anytime we, the people, come together to improve our lives, the Nation is committing some terrible wrong. From their rhetoric, one would think they believe that the government that functions best is a government that doesn’t function at all. So far, they haven’t ended government, but they have achieved the next best thing—shutting the government down.

But behind all the slogans of the tea party and all the thinly veiled calls for anarchy in Washington, behind all that there is a reality. The American people don’t want the extremist Republicans’ bizarre vision of a future without government. They don’t support it. Why? Because the American people know that without government, we would no longer be a great nation with a bright future. The American people know that government matters.

The anarchy gang is quick to malign government, but when was the last time anyone called for regulators to go easier on companies that put lead in children’s toys or for food inspectors to stop checking whether the meat in our grocery stores is crawling with deadly bacteria or for the FDA to ignore whether morning sickness drugs will cause horrible deformities in little babies? We never hear that—not from political leaders in Washington and not from the American people. In fact, whenever the anarchy gang makes headway in their efforts to damage our government, the opposite happens. After the sequester kicked in, Republicans immediately turned around and called on the technical funding for our national defense and to keep the air traffic controllers on the job.

Now that the House Republicans have shut down the government, holding the country hostage because of some imaginary health care bogeyman, Republicans almost immediately turned around and called on us to start reopening parts of our government. Why did they do this? Because the bogeyman “government” is like the bogeyman under the bed. It is not real. It doesn’t exist.

What is real and what does exist are all the important work we as Americans have chosen to do together through our government. In our democracy, government is not some make-believe thing that has an independent will of its own. In our democracy, government is just how we describe

what we, the people, have already decided to do together. It is not complicated. Our government has three basic functions: provide for the national defense; put in place rules of the road, such as speed limits, and bank regulations that are fair and transparent; and build that which none of us can build alone—roads, power grids, schools—that which gives everyone a chance to succeed.

We are a nation of innovators and entrepreneurs, growing small businesses and thriving big businesses. But our people succeed, our country succeeds because we have all come together to put public institutions and infrastructure together. We all decided to pass laws and put cops on the beat so that no one steals a purse on Main Street or a pension on Wall Street. We all decided to invest in public education so that businesses have skilled workers and a kid with an idea can create the next breakthrough company. We all decided to invest in basic science so there is a great pipeline of ideas to create our future. These achievements aren’t magic. They didn’t simply occur on their own or through dumb luck. In each instance we made a choice as a people to come together.

The Food and Drug Administration makes sure the white pills we take are antibiotics and not baking soda. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration oversees crash tests to make sure all new cars have effective brakes. The Consumer Product Safety Commission makes sure babies’ car seats don’t collapse in a crash and toasters don’t explode. We don’t know who they are, but there is no question that there are Americans alive today, Americans who are healthier, Americans who are stronger, because of these and countless other government efforts—alive, healthier, stronger because of what we did together.

The anarchy gang in the House can dump on their make-believe version of government all they want, but when the real government fails to live up to the high expectations we have all set for it, politicians in both parties rush to outrage. Why? Because the American people know government can work and believe government should work.

Today—that is right, today—marks the fifth anniversary of President Bush signing the bank bailout into law. That financial crisis cost us upwards of $14 trillion—that is trillion with a “t.” That is $120,000 for every American household—more than 2 years’ worth of income for the average family. Billions of dollars in retirement savings have disappeared, millions of workers lost their jobs, and millions more families lost their homes.

In April 2011, after a 2-year bipartisan inquiry, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 635-page report that made it plain: Regulators could have and should have used their existing tools to prevent the crisis. Republicans and Democrats, a bipartisan group, found strong agreement that—we better believe it—government matters.

The attacks on government are abstract, but the consequences of this shutdown are real: less accountability for cheaters and rule-breakers, less opportunity for our children, cracks in the foundations that businesses need to succeed, and a tilted playing field that limits opportunities for all of our people.

We know that government doesn’t always work. We know no institution is infallible. People make mistakes, ideas fail, and sometimes we get it wrong. But our response isn’t to give up. Our response isn’t to sit back and say: I told you so. We are not a nation of quitters. Our response, the American response, is to fix it, to make government work better.

Our democracy is an experiment, and it is always evolving. We constantly redesign and reimagine and improve on what we do together. But time and time again throughout our history we have reaffirmed the simple truth that government matters. Right now, right at this moment, if we look closely, we will see that we are reaffirming it once again. It is not an accident that the desire to shut down government is confined to one extremist faction of one political party of one Chamber of Congress of one branch of government. It is not an accident that this extremist faction must resort to absurd hostage tactics—threats to turn off the government, threats to default on our debt, threats to tank the economy—to force their views on everyone else. It is not an accident that this faction is doing everything in its power to make government appear dysfunctional.

In a democracy, these hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights through Congress, can’t win their fights for the Presidency, and can’t win their fights in courts.

But these threats are not working and they will never work because this is a democracy, and for more than 200 years our democracy has defeated extremists and rejected the idea that government does not matter.

So to those who have forced us to the brink, to those who rail against a make-believe government, to those who seem to rejoice in anarchy, to those who have salivated at the chance to shut down our government because their extremist views have left them disconnected from the experiences of the American people, it is time to hear a simple message:

You can do your best to make government look like it does not work when you stop it from working, you can do your best to make government look paralyzed when you paralyze it, you can do your best to make government look incompetent through your incompetence and through your ineffectiveness, but sooner or later the government will reopen because this is a democracy and this democracy has already rejected your views.

We have already chosen to work together because we all know we are stronger when we come together. And when this government reopens, when our markets are safe again, when our scientists can return to their research, when our small businesses can borrow, when our veterans can be respected for their service, when our flu shots resume and our Head Start programs get back to teaching our kids, we will have rejected your views once again.

We are not a country of anarchists. We are not a country of pessimists and ideologues whose motto is “I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.” We are not a country that tolerates dangerous drugs, unsafe meat, dirty air, or toxic mortgages. We are not that nation, we have never been that nation, and we will never be that nation.

Today, a political minority in the House that condemns government and begged for this shutdown has had its day. But like all the reckless and extremist factions that have come before it, their day will pass and our democracy will return to the important work we have already chosen to do together.

I thank the Chair.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I did not really expect to come down here and speak. I was just checking on a judge vote, which I understand has been postponed. But I do say this: It appears to me that the CR discussion and the debt ceiling discussion are going to be combined maybe into one effort, and I just want to say that I think that is a great opportunity for all of us. I was down here yesterday talking about the same.

Typically, when we have dealt with issues such as this, what we have tried to do together is figure out a way to strengthen our country through making those kinds of reforms that lessen the amount of deficits we are going to have in the future. That is typically what debates such as this have been about.

So I think the realization that people have right now—that we could well try to deal with the CR and the debt ceiling at the same time—could move us back into the kind of constructive conversation we have had for so long around mandatory spending reforms, figuring out a way to keep spending reductions where they are but build upon them, but do it in a way that is more sensible than what we have done in the past.

So, again, I was beginning to get worried. And I will stop in a minute. It looks as if the senior Senator——

Madam President, will my friend from Tennessee yield for a question?

I would be tremendously honored to take a question from the distinguished Senator.

Has the Senator seen the polls of American public opinion about what we are doing here? Has the Senator had a chance to see that?

I do not pay as much attention to polls possibly as I should. My understanding, in listening to the senior Senator from Arizona, is they are not particularly favorable.

To all of us. To all of us.

Yes. I did not mean to individuals.

To both sides of the aisle. And they do not understand, isn’t it true, why we have not been able to come to some conclusion?

As the Senator from Tennessee just said, we now are going to have this merged into the debt limit.

Right.

The Senator from Tennessee has an extensive background in finance. Isn’t it true that the world markets would react in a very, very severe fashion if we allowed the debt limit to expire?

I think everyone understands that is very problematic for markets. Actually, we are beginning to see some volatility now that we have not seen in the past.

I would like to respond, if I could, a little more fully to say that I think we have an opportunity—look, we have been in a place that I think people have known. We have known exactly where the discussions in the past were going to lead; that is, to this box canyon.

I think the fact that we have ended up in a place now where these two things may merge—and I know the senior Senator from Arizona has been involved in multiple conversations about this—I think we have an opportunity now to begin talking again about those things that strengthen our Nation and looking at some reforms, not to do so in a chicken way, in a way where you have two cars heading at each other, but to use this like previous debt ceilings have been used where adults sit down, they look at the problems our Nation is facing, and we do some things that, candidly, in a bipartisan way, people have been trying to do for a long time.

I would like to mention one more time—I know I did this yesterday, and I know the senior Senator from Arizona and myself have spent a lot of time together on this issue—the

President, in his budget in April, put forth some mandatory reforms. Many of those are pretty good. I would like to make them better, but they are a pretty good start. We have a few days—a week, 2 weeks—here where we could actually sit down maybe and cobble something together that would mean that while all this acrimony has existed for some time, we might get back on target and back to focusing on making our country stronger.

I know today we were in this incredible hearing on Iran, and I certainly appreciated the comments of the senior Senator from Arizona about our concerns there. One of the biggest issues we have around the world right now is just people look at us—as the Senator was alluding to a minute ago—as unable to deal with our fiscal issues.

So I look at what has happened. I know it can be viewed in whichever way you want to view it. I look at it as being a glass half full. We have an opportunity over the next short period of time to do some good policy, put some good policy in place, to pass a CR, to pass the debt ceiling, and again move our country ahead toward being stronger.

I am sorry to respond with such a long answer.

May I ask just one more question of my friend from Tennessee.

We know that sooner or later the government will begin to function again—sooner or later.

It will function again.

Sooner or later we will address the debt ceiling because the United States is not going to renege on its debts.

That is right.

It is going to meet its obligations. So we know those are facts. We know that at some point there is going to have to be a resolution. It is not going to go on forever. Nothing does. So if it argues for a solution, shouldn’t we ask all parties to sit down and start discussions that the Senator and I and others have had kind of on an ad hoc basis, sort of, with people here and there and then conversations here and there, to start laying the groundwork?

I also want to point out that I think it is important that the President of the United States, rather than saying “I will not negotiate with anybody under any circumstances,” say “I am willing to sit down and negotiate. I am willing to join with all parties in trying to find a way through this.”

We will sooner or later. The question is not whether we will solve these issues. The question really is—and I ask my friend from Tennessee—how much damage will be done before we solve it. Right now, there are people beginning to hurt all over America, and maybe it is not so bad right now, but it is going to get worse every single day that goes by. Frankly, I think we owe the American people more than that. Now, if somebody wants to blame me, fine. I will take the blame. If they want to blame the Senator from Tennessee, put the blame on him—on the President, on anybody. But shouldn’t we remember what our duties are here?

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I am just looking down to see what the date is, but it seems to me that we have 2 weeks here, and to get to the Senator’s comments, hopefully a week. In other words, the quicker we resolve these issues, the better it is for our Nation, the better it is for the world, because at the end of the day, let’s face it, what we care about most is the well-being of our citizens back home. We know that uncertainty creates uncertainty in the economy. It affects people’s jobs. I would agree.

Look, we are at that moment in time where we have all realized the CR and the debt ceiling are probably going to be linked together. They are linked together in essence, and, as the senior Senator from Arizona just mentioned, there is no question we are going to resolve those. So what we ought to do is sit down right now, the President of the United States, the appropriate leadership here in the House and Senate—and whether it is they or their proxies—but to sit down, and let’s figure out if there are some reforms we can put in place to make our country stronger and to again get back on the right topic, which is our financial strength. I think we could do that.

The fact is that there are no new issues. Every single issue has been litigated. There is legislative language. They are scored. There is not a new issue for us to talk about relative to putting some good policy in place to move ahead.

The Senator from Arizona has been so involved in these issues. I just could not agree more. I know the junior Senator from Arizona is sitting in the back, and I know he has been incredibly responsible fiscally.

I think we have an opportunity. I think this body should take advantage of it. I think the President should come to the table, take advantage of it, the leadership of the House. Let’s do something good for our country. Let’s do it in an appropriate amount of time. Let’s put this behind us and move on—move on as a nation.

I thank my friend.

Does the Senator yield the floor?

I do.

The Senator from Arizona.

Madam President, I want to thank my friend from Tennessee, whose commitment to achieving solutions and resolution of this bitter environment in which we find ourselves is admirable. I am grateful for his participation and his leadership. I also thank my young, handsome colleague from Arizona, who also has had a many yearlong commitment to fiscal sanity and balance. I thank my colleagues.

Syria
Page: S7165

Madam President, I come to the floor to talk for a short period of time about Syria, which is, although not dominating our conversation here—lead stories in both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are deeply disturbing.

First, I would like to point out that on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today there is an article titled “Syrian Regime Chokes Off Food To Town That Was Gassed.” I repeat: “Syrian Regime Chokes Off Food To Town That Was Gassed.”

Government forces are tightening the noose around one of the suburbs gassed by chemical weapons in August, raising concerns of a fresh humanitarian crisis as residents forage for olives, grapevine leaves and other basic foods.

Pro-regime fighters—

That is Bashar al-Assad’s killers—

have encircled about 12,000 people, mostly civilians but also including some rebel fighters, in the town of Moadhamiya, according to local and international aid workers, opposition activists and people interviewed on Monday in a government-controlled section of the town.

This is a town that is strategically important to both sides because the flow of humanitarian and military aid flows through this particular area for those who are fighting in Aleppo and in Damascus.

The story goes on:

“We won’t allow them to be nourished in order to kill us,” said a 24-year-old pro-regime paramilitary in the government-controlled section. ..... “Let them starve for a bit, surrender and then be put on trial.”

These are the same people, apparently government forces, that are “cooperating” with us on chemical weapons, that are allowing inspectors to come in to gather the chemical weapons. So they have 12,000 people encircled, that they have already gassed, 1,400 of them, 400 children in the same town. So now they are going to starve them. Like the fighters said, “Let them starve for a bit, surrender and then be put on trial.”

It is remarkable. An opposition activist inside the rebel-held side of the town who was reached by Skype said the situation is so dire now in the rebel-controlled area that people are subsisting on whatever they can forage locally, including olives, grapevine leaves, fresh mint, and figs.

So here we have the latest result of our wonderful and much heralded agreement on chemical weapons. They killed, in this town, 1,400 people, 400 of them children, with gas. Now they are going to kill 12,000 more with conventional weapons: bombs, guns, tanks, knives. Brutality and torture has characterized their behavior for a long period of time.

It seems to me it is a little bizarre. It is a little bizarre that we are hailing this cooperation from Bashar Assad on chemical weapons, and meanwhile the slaughter goes on: 110,000 dead, 1 million children refugees, the surrounding countries being destabilized, and, of course, the refugee camps are terrible situations to which we have not given the assistance that we should.

I urge all of my colleagues, if they had the opportunity, to visit one of these refugee camps and hear the stories of the murder, the gang rapes, the torture that is the official doctrine of Bashar Assad, not random acts of violence. The defectors from Bashar Assad’s military will tell you that is their training and indoctrination and instructions.

So the second article today is from the Washington Post. “CIA ramping up covert training program for moderate Syrian rebels.”

The CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition fighters in Syria amid concern that moderate U.S.-backed militias are rapidly losing ground in the country’s civil war.

But the CIA program is so miniscule that it is expected to produce only a few hundred trained fighters each month even after it is enlarged, a level that officials said will do little to bolster rebel forces that are being eclipsed by radical Islamists in the fight against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Here is the interesting part.

The CIA’s mission, officials said, has been defined by the White Houses’s desire to seek a political settlement, a scenario that relies on an eventual stalemate among the warring factions rather than a clear victor. As a result, officials said, limits on the agency’s authorities enable it to provide enough support to help ensure that politically moderate, U.S.-supported militias don’t lose but not enough for them to win.

Picture these young people who are fighting in Syria today. The official U.S. policy is that they will provide weapons but only enough so they cannot win. Those people are being slaughtered. They are being murdered. They are dying. Some 110,000 have died. I am not sure how many of them were actual fighters. The official U.S. policy, according to the Washington Post, is that they want them not to win.

It is hard to motivate people to fight for a cause that we are not willing to help them win.

The agency has trained fewer than 1,000 rebel fighters this year, current and former U.S. officials said. By contrast, U.S. intelligence analysts estimate that more than 20,000 have been trained to fight for government-backed militias by Assad’s ally Iran and the Hezbollah militant network it sponsors.

So we have trained 1,000. We are going to do about 100 a week, I guess, something like that. More than 20,000 have been trained by the Iranians, who are all in, and we expect them to be able to continue fighting.

The CIA is ramping up its effort ..... it was clear that the opposition was losing, and not only losing tactically but on a more strategic level.

Congressman Mike Rogers, whom I respect a lot, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said there is a—

..... high degree of frustration ..... with the Syrian strategy. The situation in Syria is changing faster than the administration can keep up. U.S. support for moderate opposition groups is less than robust and has been hobbled by inconsistent resource allocation with stated goals.

CIA veterans expressed skepticism that the training and weapons deliveries will have any meaningful effect. In Jordan, operatives involved in training and arming rebels lament that we’re being asked to do something with nothing.

I would like to quote some articles:

“Al-Qaeda expands in Syria via Islamic State.”

A rebranded vision of Iraq’s al-Qaeda affiliate is surging onto the front lines of the war in neighboring Syria, expanding into territory seized by other rebel groups and carving out the kind of sanctuaries that the U.S. military spent more than a decade fighting to prevent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We left Iraq. Iraq is now deteriorating. Thousands of people are being killed literally every month. Now we see Al Qaeda coming from Iraq in larger and larger numbers.

Finally, I would like to mention the Wall Street Journal article from some time ago:

“Iranians Dial Up Presence in Syria. Shiite Militiamen From Across the Arab World Train at a Base Near Tehran to Do Battle in Syria.”

At a base near Tehran, Iranian forces are training Shiite militiamen from across the Arab world to do battle in Syria—showing the widening role of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria’s bloody war.

The busloads of Shiite militiamen from Iraq, Syria and other Arab states have been arriving at the Iranian base in recent weeks, under cover of darkness, for instruction in urban warfare and the teaching of Iran’s clerics, according to Iranian military figures and residents in the area. The fighters’ mission: Fortify the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad against Sunni rebels, the U.S. and Israel.

So here is what we should take away from all this recent reporting: Despite the recent agreement on chemical weapons, that agreement does nothing to address the underlying conflict in Syria, which not only continues but is getting worse and worse.

So, my friends, as the administration trumpets this deal of chemical weapons, the fact is that the slaughter goes on. It is clear to these people whom I have spoken with personally, tragically their morale is badly damaged. They believe they have been abandoned. The ongoing tragedy and massacre continues in Syria. The United States will pay a very heavy price in the future unless we do something rather dramatic.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that after the quorum call I be recognized.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Recess Subject to the Call of the Chair
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Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.

There being no objection, the Senate, at 2:33 p.m., recessed subject to the call of the Chair and reassembled at 4:12 p.m. when called to order by the.

The majority leader is recognized.

Capitol Hill Shooting
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Today was a sobering reminder of how Federal law enforcement officers keep all of us safe—not us, the Members of Congress, but the American people. We have millions of people who visit this Capitol every year, and they work so hard to protect this Capitol, this city, and the citizens of the United States from harm.

The brave men and women on the Capitol Police force are so well trained. The Capitol police officers put their lives on the line every day for us. I thank them for their service and their sacrifice—and it is a sacrifice. There was no better example of that than today. Chief Gainer and others will have more about the details.

I will only say this: I spoke just a few minutes ago to one of the police officers who was injured in this situation that took place. It was so inspiring to talk to this man. He has been hurt, but he said—and I am paraphrasing but not much—I work every day to make sure you are safe. When he says “me,” he is not talking about me, he is talking about us. My thoughts are with him for a speedy recovery, and again my admiration goes to all Federal law enforcement but especially our Capitol Police.

Promotion Of Robert Herbert
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Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I congratulate Bob Herbert on his recent promotion to Brigadier General in the United States Army National Guard. Today I had the honor to preside over his promotion ceremony in the Mansfield Room. Bob has been a loyal member of my staff for the past 14 years. But he had also given 38 years of loyal military service to Nevada and our Nation.

Bob Herbert grew up the son of a military man, retired MSG Robert W. Herbert. From an early age Bob had a great fascination with military aviation. Before he graduated from high school in Slinger, WI, Bob joined the Army to fly in a unique program known as “High School to Flight School.” Once he completed flight school, Bob was posted in Germany, where he flew patrols along the borders between East and West Germany during the Cold War era. After a successful 3-year tour in Germany, Bob completed his undergraduate work at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Shortly after graduation, he attended test pilot school and earned the title of Army test pilot.

As a test pilot, he flew both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, including helicopters, which we all know are important to both modern military missions and for fighting fires and responding to emergencies in the civilian world.

After 6 years of active duty with the Army, Bob moved to Reno, where he transitioned to the Nevada Army National Guard. As a member of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, I had the opportunity to meet with Bob Herbert about the needs of the Nevada Guard. I quickly found that Bob was not only an outstanding military officer but was excellent with numbers and figures surrounding the Military’s budget and equipment.

At my request, Bob arranged to come to Washington where he worked as a fellow with the Brookings Institution. During that time, he was assigned to me, and worked closely with my staff on Nevada military issues as well as national defense policy and appropriations. During his time as a fellow, Bob was promoted by the military and I had the privilege of pinning Bob with his Lieutenant Colonel insignia.

When his fellowship concluded, I asked Bob to join my staff here in Washington, D.C. Bob had become an important part of my office and his expertise would have been hard to replace. Over the years I have grown to depend on his judgment and advice, not just about military matters but about many other issues. He has always made sound decisions and is able to bring simple common sense to complex issues.

I was pleased when Bob decided to work for me full time on military and veterans’ affairs, as well as transportation and technology issues. Throughout his time on my staff, Bob has also remained committed to the Army and continued to serve his National Guard unit in Nevada. While working full-time on my staff, Bob earned a master’s degree in public administration from George Washington University, my alma mater.

After working in Washington D.C. for 4 years, I asked Bob to return to Nevada to work in one of my district offices. Bob had a nice home in Reno and I think he was excited to return to his house and his motorcycle. Little did he know, I needed him to work out of my Las Vegas office. But Bob never flinched and moved from Reno to Las Vegas.

After my elevation to the position of Democratic Leader, I once again asked Bob to return to Washington to help with my defense and military portfolio. I know that Bob was disappointed to leave Nevada, but he has more than made up for that disappointment by purchasing three additional motorcycles while working here in Washington, for a total of four motorcycles. His most recent motorcycle is a Harley-Davidson custom softail. Like a good parent he ensures that he spends quality time with each bike and enjoys riding nearly every weekend on the backroads of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He ultimately plans to have one BMW and one Harley-Davidson on each coast to optimize his motorcycle adventures.

For almost 38 years, Brigadier General Herbert has honorably served our Nation in the enlisted, warrant officer, and officer ranks. As Brigadier General he is currently assigned as the Assistant to the Adjutant General for the Nevada Army National Guard. And he has flown more than 7,000 hours as a pilot, splitting time between helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

I am very so grateful for Bob’s service—for his service to his country, to the state of Nevada and to me. I appreciate his loyalty so much. Congratulations, General Herbert, on this well-deserved promotion.

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Remembering Suzanne Scott
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[Begin Insert]

Mr. President, Stephanie and I wish to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Suzanne “Sue” Scott. Sue passed away on September 9, 2013. Her husband, Walter, and the entire Scott and Singer families remain in our thoughts and prayers during this sad time. Her loving family, special circle of friends, and many admirers throughout the State of Nebraska and this great Nation are mourning her passing and reflecting on her remarkable life of service.

Sue truly embodied compassion in action, lending her time and talents to many community organizations. She leaves behind a wonderful legacy. One could list the many brick and mortar improvements attributed to Sue and identify them as her legacy. This is true and itself worthy of acknowledgement. But, there is a much more profound aspect of her legacy. It is the remarkable example of selfless and tireless service to others, which will inspire generations to come. She gave of herself: not only in name, but in genuine service to others. Sue was not afraid to roll up her sleeves and do the real work of volunteering. Her remarkable leadership extended to: Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, Children’s Hospital & Medical Center Foundation, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands, Omaha Zoological Society, and Joslyn Art Museum, among others. With Walter, she delighted in supporting the Kingdoms of the Seas Aquarium at the Henry Doorly Zoo and the Recital Hall at the Holland Performing Arts Center, bearing their names, in addition to numerous other philanthropic contributions. I am confident I speak for all Nebraskans in thanking the Scotts—indeed, Sue and Walter made an outstanding team—for their commitment to the community and willingness to help neighbors in need.

Thanks to the Scotts, “The Good Life” in Nebraska has been made even better and will surely remain vibrant for years to come. Sue’s volunteerism and her can-do attitude will continue to serve as a worthy example for others to follow. Though Sue is no longer with us, her spirit will surely live on through those who follow her example and answer the call to community service and share their time, talents and treasure with fellow citizens.

We are saddened by her passing and wish to again extend our heartfelt sympathy to Walter and the Singer and Scott families. May God bless them.�

[End Insert]

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At 10:31 a.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered by Mrs. Cole, one of its reading clerks, announced that the House has passed the following bill and joint resolutions, without amendment:

. An act to extend the period during which Iraqis who were employed by the United States Government in Iraq may be granted special immigrant status and to temporarily increase the fee or surcharge for processing machine-readable non-immigrant visas.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations of local funds of the District of Columbia for fiscal year 2014.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

Enrolled Bill Signed
At 3:47 p.m., a message from the House of Representatives, delivered by Mrs. Cole, one of its reading clerks, announced that the Speaker has signed the following enrolled bill:

An act to extend the period during which Iraqis who were employed by the United States Government in Iraq may be granted special immigrant status and to temporarily increase the fee or surcharge for processing machine-readable nonimmigrant visas.

The enrolled bill was subsequently signed by the President pro tempore (Mr. LEAHY).

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The following joint resolutions were read the second time, and placed on the calendar pursuant to the order of October 2, 2013:

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations of local funds of the District of Columbia for fiscal year 2014.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

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The following joint resolutions were read the first time pursuant to the order of October 2, 2013.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for National Park Service operations, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations of local funds of the District of Columbia for fiscal year 2014.

Joint resolution making continuing appropriations for the National Institutes of Health for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

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The following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated:

A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), transmitting, pursuant to law, a report relative to a violation of the Antideficiency Act that occurred within the Department of the Air Force and was assigned Air Force case number 11-08; to the Committee on Appropriations.

A communication from the Acting Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), transmitting the report of an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the rear admiral (lower half) in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777; to the Committee on Armed Services.

A communication from the Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Revisions to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to Make the Commerce Control List (CCL) Clearer” (RIN0694-AF37) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

A communication from the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Special Regulations; Areas of the National Park System; Yellowstone National Park; Winter Use” (RIN1024-AE15) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

A communication from the Director of Human Resources, Environmental Protection Agency, transmitting, pursuant to law, (8) eight reports relative to vacancies in the Environmental Protection Agency, received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the General Counsel, Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Architectural Barriers Act Accessibility Guidelines; Outdoor Developed Areas” (RIN3014-AA22) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

A communication from the Chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission, transmitting, pursuant to law, the biennial report relative to the impact of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act; to the Committee on Finance.

A communication from the Program Manager, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Medicare Program; FY 2014 Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems: Changes to Certain Cost Reporting Procedures Related to Disproportionate Share Hospital Uncompensated Care Payments” (RIN0938-AR53) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on October 1, 2013; to the Committee on Finance.

A communication from the Deputy Director, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Department of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination Obligations of Contractors and Subcontractors Regarding Individuals with Disabilities” (RIN1250-AA02) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Deputy Director, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Department of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination Obligations of Contractors and Subcontractors Regarding Special Disabled Veterans, Veterans of the Vietnam Era, Disabled Veterans, Recently Separated Veterans, Active Duty Wartime or Campaign Badge Veterans, and Armed Forces Service Medal Veterans” (RIN1250-AA00) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report related to the Food and Drug Administration’s implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Chairman of the National Health Care Workforce Commission, transmitting, a report relative to the status of the Commission; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Secretary of Labor, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report entitled “The Department of Labor’s 2012 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor”; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

A communication from the Acting Senior Procurement Executive, Office of Acquisition Policy, General Services Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Federal Acquisition Regulation; Federal Acquisition Circular 2005-70, Introduction” (FAC2005-70) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

A communication from the Acting Senior Procurement Executive, Office of Acquisition Policy, General Services Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Federal Acquisition Regulation; Allowability of Legal Costs for Whistleblower Proceedings” (FAC2005-70) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

A communication from the Acting Senior Procurement Executive, Office of Acquisition Policy, General Services Administration, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled “Federal Acquisition Regulation; Pilot Program for Enhancement of Contractor Employee Whistleblower Protections” (FAC2005-70) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on September 30, 2013; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

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The following petitions and memorials were laid before the Senate and were referred or ordered to lie on the table as indicated:

POM-150. A resolution adopted by the City Council of South Bend, Indiana petitioning for use of the Vice-Presidential Seal; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

POM-151. A resolution adopted by the House of Delegates of the State of West Virginia urging the United States Congress to protect the Social Security benefits that aid our most vulnerable citizens; to the Committee on Finance.

House Resolution No. 21

Whereas, Social Security cost of living adjustments are currently based on the Consumer Price Index released annually by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. The United States Congress is considering changing the annual cost of living adjustments calculated for Social Security recipients; and

Whereas, The Chained Consumer Price Index finds smaller increases in consumer prices than the traditional Consumer Price Index by estimating how consumers may change their buying habits as prices change; and

Whereas, According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, changing to the Chained Consumer Price Index would result in significant cuts to Social Security benefits: a cut of roughly three percent after 10 years, about six percent after 20 years, and close to nine percent over 30 years. For the average worker retiring at age 65, this would mean a cut of about $650 each year by age 75 and a cut of roughly $1,130 each year at age 85; and

Whereas, AARP estimates that this change would cut Social Security benefits by $112 billion over the next 10 years, leaving seniors struggling to keep up with the rising cost of utilities, health care and prescription drugs. Cuts would start now and get bigger every year; and

Whereas, The AARP estimates that ninety-two percent of West Virginians 65 or older, approximately 277,734 people, receive Social Security benefits. The average annual benefit is $13,500. Social Security makes up 70 percent of the annual income for a typical older West Virginian and 77 percent of annual incomes for low- and middle-income seniors: Now therefore, be it

Resolved by the West Virginia House of Delegates, That the West Virginia House of Delegates urges the United States Congress to protect the Social Security benefits that aid our most vulnerable citizens; and be it further

Resolved, That the West Virginia House of Delegates requests that the West Virginia Congressional Delegation support protecting Social Security for West Virginia seniors and vulnerable residents by voting against any legislation that would base cost of living adjustments to the Chained Consumer Price Index; and be it further

Resolved, That the Clerk of the West Virginia House of Delegates mail a copy of this resolution to the Vice President of the United States and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority and Minority Leaders of both Houses of Congress, and to each United States Senator and Member of the House of Representatives from West Virginia.

POM-152. A resolution adopted by the House of the Representatives of the State of Arkansas memorializing opposition to any action that would limit the right to keep and bear arms; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution No. 1003

Whereas, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”; and

Whereas, the right to keep and bear arms has benefited the State of Arkansas, its economy, and its citizens; and

Whereas, generations of Arkansans have enjoyed and benefited from the lifestyle fostered by the freedoms and protection granted by the Second Amendment; and

Whereas, the right to keep and bear arms should not be abridged, infringed upon, or in any way limited by the action of any branch of the federal government or a state or local government: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-Ninth General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, That the House of Representatives encourages all branches of federal, state, and local government to respect and preserve the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and opposes any action that would abridge, infringe upon, or limit the right to keep and bear arms; and be it further

Resolved, That the chief clerk of the House of Representatives distribute a copy of this resolution to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the chief executive officer of each legislative chamber for each of the fifty (50) state legislatures within the United States, and each member of the Arkansas Congressional Delegation.

POM-153. A resolution adopted by the House of the Representatives of the State of Arkansas memorializing its support for traditional marriage; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution No. 1049

Whereas, marriage is a fundamental social institution that has been tested and reaffirmed over thousands of years; and

Whereas, historically marriage has been reflected in our law and the law of all Jurisdictions in the United States as the union of a man and a woman, and the everyday meaning of marriage and the legal meaning of marriage has always been defined as the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife; and

Whereas, families consisting of the legal union of one man and one woman for the purpose of bearing and raising children remains the basic unit of our civil society; and

Whereas, in 1996, Congress overwhelmingly passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act under which Congress exercised its rights under the effects clause of Section 1 of Article IV of the United States Constitution; and

Whereas, Section 2(a) of the Defense of Marriage Act clearly spells out that “No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.”; and

Whereas, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage, states that “the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”; and

Whereas, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in U.S. v. Windsor on March 27, 2013, asking whether the Defense of Marriage Act—passed under the effects clause of Section 1 of Article IV of the United States Constitution—violates the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution; and

Whereas, in February, the Justice Department of President Barack Obama filed a brief with the Supreme court of the United States, asking the Supreme Court to invalidate Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act; and

Whereas, on November 2, 2004, 753,770 Arkansans voted to pass Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 3 to the Constitution of the State of Arkansas, representing 74.95% of the votes cast; and

Whereas, the total amount of votes cast in favor of Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 3 was higher than the total amount of votes cast for the re-election of President George W. Bush; and

Whereas, Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 3 became Amendment 83 to the Constitution of the State of Arkansas; and

Whereas, Section 1 of Amendment 83 reads, “Marriage consists only of the union of one man and one woman.”; and

Whereas, Section 2 of Amendment 83 reads, “Legal status for unmarried persons which is identical or substantially similar to marital status shall not be valid or recognized in Arkansas, except that the legislature may recognize a common law marriage from another state between a man and a woman.”: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-Ninth General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, That the House of Representatives reaffirms its support for traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman, as expressed in Amendment 83 of the Constitution of the State of Arkansas and the Defense of Marriage Act; and be it further

Resolved, That the chief clerk of the House of Representatives distribute a copy of this resolution to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court, the chief executive officer of each legislative chamber for each of the fifty (50) state legislatures within the United States, and each member of the Arkansas Congressional Delegation.

POM-154. A resolution adopted by the House of Delegates of the State of West Virginia urging the United States Congress to preserve and protect the Second Amendment rights of all law abiding Americans; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution No. 18

Whereas, Our nation has recently suffered from various acts of mass murder, most notably the tragedy of December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School; and,

Whereas, Law abiding citizens are not an issue; and

Whereas, Millions of Americans own firearms and do so safely, responsibly and legally; and

Whereas, Law abiding citizens should not be punished for the crimes of evil people; and

Whereas, The investigative research of these tragic events most often leads us to the underlying cause being linked to mental illness and not law abiding gun ownership; and

Whereas, The real issue, the real threat, is dangerous criminals and the seriously men tally ill who need supervision and treatment; and

Whereas, Violent behavior by individuals suffering from various forms of mental illness is the true issue that warrants the focus of our nation’s President and Congress; and

Whereas, West Virginia is a slate that strongly supports the Second Amendment rights of the United State’s Constitution and the rights found in Article Three, Section Twenty-two of its own Constitution, and believes that all efforts should be undertaken to preserve such rights to the fullest: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Delegates, That the West Virginia House of Delegates conveys to the Congress of the United States that it supports efforts to preserve and protect: our freedoms especially preserving the Second Amendment rights of all law abiding Americans; and be it further

Resolved, That the West Virginia House of Delegates urges the United States Congress to focus on strengthening the areas of mental health diagnosis and treatment; and be it further

Resolved, That the West Virginia House of Delegates requests that the West Virginia Congressional Delegation support actions that preserve Second Amendment Rights and efforts to address mental health diagnosis and treatment in the hope that our nation will never again experience these senseless acts of mass murder, and be it further

Resolved, That the Clerk of the West Virginia House of Delegates deliver a copy of this resolution to the Vice President of the United States and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority and Minority Leaders of the both Houses of Congress, and the each United States Senator and Member of the House of Representatives from West Virginia.

POM-155. A resolution adopted by the House of Delegates of the State of West Virginia memorializing support for an amendment to the United States Constitution to establish that corporations and unions are not entitled to the same rights and protection as natural persons under the Constitution; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

House Resolution No. 9

Whereas, In 2010, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that enabled corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of our elections; and

Whereas, A subsequent ruling Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, opened the door for individual donors to spend unlimited amounts as well; and

Whereas, The use of so-called Super PACs by wealthy individuals and special interests nationally has driven up the cost of elections to over $6 billion in the federal elections alone and reduced local voices in the democratic process; and

Whereas, In 2012, based upon Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a century old long-standing Montana campaign finance law, denying states the right to regulate their elections in accordance with their experience of the corrupting influence of money in politics; and

Whereas, The people of West Virginia and all other states should have the power to limit by law the influence of money in their political systems; and

Whereas, On Election Day, 2012, over six million voters across the United States had the opportunity to vote on state and local ballot measures, including the states of Montana and Colorado, calling for a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, including the entire states of Montana and Colorado, and all proposed resolutions passed with overwhelming and bipartisan support, averaging seventy-five percent of voters in favor: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Delegates, That the West Virginia House of Delegates supports an amendment to the United States Constitution to establish that corporations and unions are not entitled to the same rights and protection as natural persons under the Constitution; and be it further

Resolved, That such an amendment should assure the power of the federal, state, and local governments to limit, regulate, and require disclosure of sources of all money spent to influence elections; and be it further

Resolved, That the West Virginia House of Delegates requests that the West Virginia Congressional Delegation support such an amendment, work diligently towards its passage, and vote at all stages to advance such legislation in the Congress; and be it further

Resolved, That the Clerk of the West Virginia House of Delegates deliver a copy of this resolution to the Vice President of the United States and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority and Minority Leaders of both Houses of Congress, and to each United States Senator and Member of the House of Representatives from West Virginia.

POM-156. A resolution adopted by the Mayor and City Commission of the City of Miami Beach, Florida memorializing support for the creation of a coalition in support of the initiative to reduce gun violence and illegal firearms trafficking; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

POM-157. A resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees of the Village of Albion, New York memorializing opposition to any legislation which infringes upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

POM-158. A resolution adopted by the Town Board of Sumner, WI memorializing support of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating that only human beings are endowed with constitutional rights and money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

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At the request of, the name of the Senator from Montana was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to prohibit Members of Congress and the President from receiving pay during Government shutdowns.

At the request of, the name of the Senator from New Hampshire was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to revise and extend provisions under the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act.

At the request of, the name of the Senator from Minnesota was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to increase and adjust for inflation the maximum value of articles that may be imported duty-free by one person on one day, and for other purposes.

At the request of, the name of the Senator from Nevada was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, and shooting, and for other purposes.

At the request of, the name of the Senator from Arkansas was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide for the participation of optometrists in the National Health Service Corps scholarship and loan repayment programs, and for other purposes.

At the request of, the name of the Senator from Arkansas was added as a cosponsor of , a bill to ensure that any new or revised requirement providing for the screening, testing, or treatment of individuals operating commercial motor vehicles for sleep disorders is adopted through a rulemaking proceeding, and for other purposes.

At the request of, the names of the Senator from Washington , the Senator from New York , the Senator from Hawaii and the Senator from New Hampshire  were added as cosponsors of , a bill to provide for the compensation of furloughed Federal employees.

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Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the sessions of the Senate on October 3, 2013, at 9:30 a.m.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 3, 2013, at 10 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled, “Reversing Iran’s Nuclear Program.”

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 3, 2013, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a Western Hemisphere and Global Narcotics Affairs subcommittee nomination hearing.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

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Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar Nos. 188 and 198, resolutions relative to the authorization of committee funding.

Is there objection to proceeding to the resolutions en bloc?

Without objection, the clerk will report the resolutions by title.

A resolution authorizing the reporting of committee funding resolutions for the period of October 1, 2013, through February 28, 2015;

A resolution authorizing expenditures by committees of the Senate for the periods October 1, 2013, through September 30, 2014, and October 1, 2014, through February 28, 2015.

There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

The resolutions were agreed to.

(The resolution is printed in the Record of Tuesday, September 17, 2013, and the resolution  is printed in the Record of Tuesday, September 24, 2013, under “Submitted Resolutions.”)

Orders for Friday, October 4, 2013
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Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, October 4; that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for debate only until 2 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Adjournment until 10:30 a.m. Tomorrow
Page: S7170

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

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