disrupting the stable pattern of climate and weather systems that had been in place since the first cities were built 9000 years ago. melting the ice and raising sea level. .. in fact, then, in that year when 20 million people were displaced from their homes, further

destabilizing a nuclear armed fragile country, and that list goes on. creating more fires. we have seen them in the west this year of our own country. we saw them in russia a few years ago leading to the removal of all grain from world market by russia, ukraine and kazakhstan leading to the world food prize in history. that the moment, a food vender in tunisia set himself on fire. there were many other factors that contributed to that individual tragedy and the events that soon thereafter unfolded, food has -- brought failures in recent events related to climate disruption. climate refugee are challenging the ability of governments to remain stable, and in those developing regions where govern

mans is already on a knife edge, there are now -- there is now the growing threat of more post national entities and the problems that come from it. so we have to address this. we there to put a price -- we have to put a price on carbon in the economy. we have to put a price on denial in the political system. i will have more to say about this on many other occasions, but because this report was released just hours before we gathered here, i would not have felt right about not addressing it. now, i'm going to talk about the potential for a shutdown in just a moment, but i think the only phrase that describes it is political terrorism. it's a nice little global economy you got there. it would be a shame if we had to

destroy it. we have a list of demands. if you don't meet them all, our deadline will blow up the global economy. really? where are the american people in this? why does partnership have anything to do with a despicable and dishonorable threat to the integrity of the united states of america? it cannot be allowed, but it can only be stopped if people in both parties and independents as well, say, look, i might not agree with everything that is in the affordable care act, but it did pass. it was upheld by the supreme court. it is the law of the land.

you didn't succeed in the constitutional process by which this was concerned, and now you want to threaten to not only shut down our government but blow up the world economy unless we go back and undo what we did according to the processes of our democracy? how dare you! how dare you. but it doesn't matter what i feel or what many of you feel unless the american people not only feel it but express it. i sure did appreciate my fellow senator bob corker yesterday. i disagree with him on all kinds of things -- most things, i guess. but i really appreciated the spirit of sentiment that he manifested there. in any case, one of the reasons

why there has been too much tolerance of trifling with the shut down of the government and the forcing of it to fall payments that are owed, is that the hostility to the very idea of government? which is, in part, something that goes way back to the days of king george, but has been fed by too many instances of poor management, problems that are allowed to linger, incompetence, -- bureaucracies that seize up and don't function well. the work of this center in bringing to bear the best minds available, the best scholarship

available under the leadership of the best leader of this center you could possibly have, this work is really important far beyond what many might think of when they see the names laid on the door or -- read the short description of what it does. this is really about the hard work and fresh thinking that is now essential in order to redeem the promise of self-governess. we are still in lincoln's phrase the best hope. the u constitution is still having been changed and made better over the last two and a quarter centuries.

the finest documents ever devised. as with administrate the program of government, we have do it well. we all know when we go in a business or store that clearly gets it and has incorporated the finest lessons of high-quality management and serves its customers extremely well, and the costs are surprisingly low compared what we might have thought when we walked in. everything clicks. we recognize such businesses and we patronize them. the same principle that lead to their success can be applied to the public sector.

so it was 20 years ago this month that i went out on the south lawn of the white house and presented president clinton with the first report of the national performance review. also known as reinventing government and popular -- we called it -- [inaudible] for reinventing government. we held this event in front of two enormous forklifts piled high with government documents intended to serve as symbols of the assessive bureaucracy and the frustration that most americans associated with the government. we worked at reinventing government and rigo for the into two terms we were privileged to be in office. i'm very proud to say that a

great many of the ideas and practices that were new back then are standard operating procedure in the federal government today. looking back, the reinventing government movement started actually three revolutions in government. i'm going listen one by one. all three of these revolutions have not only survived in one form or another within the u.s. federal system, many of them have moved -- all three of these revolutions have moved to state and local govern. they have been emulated in countries around the world. in the wake of the reinvented government initiative the u.n. sponsored series of conferences to take the idea and spread them to other countries. these meetings continue to this day. public --

policy students routinely study things that began 20 years ago with the team of change agents in the reinventing government movement. now, i often refer to myself as a recovering politician, david, on about step 9. [laughter] the longer i go without a relap, the more confident i have i'll not get back in to it. after 20 years, i would like to think i have earned the right to do a little bragging, not as a politician, but as someone who was very lucky to be able to work with hundreds of determined reformers. men and women -- many of whom still work for the

federal government, who accomplish great things. who an the call and performed in an outstanding way. i am, indeed, extremely proud of what they have done and continue to do. now these three revolution. the first revolution, the performance revolution required a cultural transformation for many agencies because it entailed a new way of thinking and a new way of doing business. unlike prior attempts at measuring government performance that were initiated and then soon thereafter abandoned, this one has now lasted for two decades. president george w. bush expanded on the idea by creating an innovation known as p. a. r. t.

the program assessment rating tool. president obama appointed the federal government's first chief performance officer and signed in to law amendments to gpra, the government performance and accounting fact he embedded some of the best innovations that evolved since that original law was enacted in the wake of our reinventing government report in 1993. this new idea to be set goals and measure government performance against those goals can now be found in the federal government and in city and state governments. i'm very proud that we were there at the beginning of the performance revolution. the second revolution we lost was the customer revolution. now, the word customer created some controversy when we used the phrase customer revolution, and some people objected that the citizen we were referring to

were, in fact, owners of the government. never the less, there was no other word other than customers that so accurately conveyed to our work force how we wanted our citizen to be treated. so we stuck with that word. and to this day, federal agencies that deal with the public measure their performance in the quality that they bring to serving their customers. one quick example that stuck with me from those years. we went out and studied the rather isolated examples of governmental unit that had actually pioneered some of the things we substituted in -- instituted in the federal government. we went and spent time with private corporations that were known for efficiency. i'll never forget spending two days shadowing herb kelleher at

southwest airlines. what a kick that was. [laughter] but i learned a lot from herb and from several of the others ceos that i met with. but i remember an example from one of the department of motor vehicles, of course, the dmv is kind of a symbol of many people of everything that can go wrong. anyway, the particular dmv decided they had to reform and they just assumed that what they needed to do was pull out all the stops to reduce the waiting period. and the length of the line and so they went through their work and before they pulled the trigger and implemented the reforms, they decided maybe we ought to ask the people who were trying to help here what they think about it. well, that's a clever idea.

they did that, and they were shocked. the biggest complaint that these folks waiting in line wanted fixed was not the line. you know what it was? it was the picture. [laughter] they stood in line once every two or three years, and they looked at that picture quite few times a week. [laughter] and so they reengineered the system to give them choices and so forth. it didn't add that much extra time. but people responded to it. they also shortened the lines. [laughter] there are many similar examples of wisdom that is impossible to gain access to unless you engage in a dialogue with the people to

whom you are drying -- trying to deliver the services of government. the third revolution was the innovation revolution. twenty years ago when i entered the white house, there were 50 sites on the worldwide web. 5-0. there were one or two other geek wannabes like me who used it, but there was no such thing as a government website. the word website was, you know, you might as well have been talking about something on the service of mars let alone was there any ability to conduct government transactions online. but a few years after we lost the niche -- launched the initiative we launched book called quality access america reengineering through information

technology." in an age when less than 25% of the public was online. we actually released this four years later, this was in '97, even then less than 25% were online. this report summarized what was to come. the internet would be used to bring information to the public on the terms. information technology made it possible to begin implementation of a nationwide electronic benefits transfer program to integrate information in the criminal justice community and provide simplified employer tax filing and reporting. it also began the integration of government information through the creation of firstgov.gov. the first comprehensive web portal in 2002. today it's u.s.a..gov.

it's to offer u.s. citizens one-stop access to u.s. information. this innovation was quickly spread to state government and local government and governments in countries and regions and municipalities throughout the world. so i'm proud of what our team did on that as well. i like to think that we left the government in better shape than we found it, and i believe that is still true today. especially for the career people who keep this thing going. inspite of sequesters, shut down, and of course non-stop criticism, the federal workers land our plane safely in ever crowded airports. they track down the bacteria that sickens people in unsafe food and food chains or grocery stores. they get the retirement checks out on time. they protect americans here and abroad. so the federal workers are not

the problem. the political class is the problem. and just as we began our reinventing government work by saying that the federal workers were good people trapped in a bad system and that was needed to change was the system. our political class is trapped in a bad system. many of them are very good people. very dedicated. some of them here. but the system has grown -- has been degraded. mr. mann, you and mr. -- were press yent when you wrote is worse than you think. it is and maybe even worse than you thought.

[laughter] but thank you for that wonderful book. i know, you and norm took a lot of heat for it. ladies and gentlemen, american democracy has been hacked that's a computer word, as you know. [laughter] which means which refers to ?b taking -- somebody taking over the operating system of a computer and making it do things that the owner of the computer doesn't want it to do. well, our democracy has been hacked. it's -- its operating system has been taken over by special interests. by using big money and lobbyists and taking advantage of a very sick political culture. that has grown worse very rapidly in the last couple of

decades. it needs to be fixed. like many other citizens, i've been dismayed by what has been going on in washington, d.c., and the political decision making process. the level of partisanship has been growing and that, too, is connected to the influence of big money. anonymous contributors, corporations pretending to be people, pursuing business plans in the guides of politics and encouraging many politicians to say things and do things that would not have been seen in the best interest of the public in years past. i grew up in a political

family. my father was in the congress for ten years before i was born, and did not leave the senate defeated in 1970 because his opposition to the vietnam war and support of the voting rights act until i was out of college. i saw it all of my life. some seven or eight years after they went to the house of representatives, but the varied experiences i've had in my lifetime have given me an id owe sin -- idiosyncratic view of the arc of american democracy over the last six decades. it's changed quite a bit. most of our elected officials

now are forced by this system to spend five hours a day on the telephone raising money or going to cocktail parties and events to raise money from special interests. it's a dull routine this both sides of the asksers and givers understand. it's spiraling downward. the craft smith at the quid pro quo at the heart of the occasion are made openly visible. that in a sense has grown as well. over time those who are drawn to participate in such a culture have changed. many men and women, who i wish were in politics, aren't in politics now. why would they be? and some they surely wish were

not in politics are speaking for long stretches of time -- [laughter] but the point is not to make it aned a homonym discourse by focus on the changes in the system that have lead to these problems. the influence of money is number one on the list. david, you were generous and kind in the comments about the founding fathers. back in those days, at the birth of our country, thomas pane was able to walk out of his front door in philadelphia and find a dozen low-cost print shops within ten square blocks. he printed common sense. he had no money, came from england as an immigrant. he the gift of clear thinking and clear expression.

he published "common sense "it became the "harry potter "of the late 18th century and helped to inspire the american revolution. in those days, when the marketplace of ideas was dominated by a technology that was easily assessable by individuals, individuals could use ideas as a way to counter balance power and money. as the decade rolled by and we entered the 20th century by mid century, by the 1960s anyway television eclipsed the plinting press, and today is completely dominant. although the internet will soon be powerful enough to bring another dominant medium. but today thomas paine could walk out his front door in

philadelphia with his newly created idio called "common sense" and walk down to the nearest tv stations and say this is really important. i need to get it before the publics' mind, when do i go on the air? you know the answer. unless he has several million dollars to pay the gate keeper, he doesn't have access to the publics' mind or the medium that now democrat come -- dominates our public. who cousin? the same special interest that hold the fundraisers here in washington and elsewhere. and their message is prevail. and the politicians who have to beg them for enough money to put their 30-second tv ads on end up

paying the piper ever more so. it has gotten to the point now where vie -- vibrant, intelligent discourt included spirited disagreement. that's how we come to the right decisions. it doesn't take place anymore. facts don't aspire -- appear to matter. preconceived ideas are simply repeated over and over and over with greater force and more loudness that makes them true. and now once again, power and wealth is pushing ideas and political discourse back out of the system. now the internet is beginning to change this individual bloggers

can change the discourse now. television is still dominant, the average american watches it five minutes a day. the number guys up every year even in the age of the internet. we're at the tipping point, that's why the initiative at brookings comes at an ideal time. now the potential for a shut down that is going unfold before us this weekend really reminds me how could not of the shut down that we went through when elaine was working with me on reinventing government. and she told a story this morning leaving out some important details on what is your blog fixgov. during the last shut down, it had occurred not that long after

the oklahoma city bombing, and the destruction of the building. the fantastic horrible tragedy, and president clinton was about to make his state of the union address, and i went to elaine and i said i want you to talk with our reinventing government team and i want do you find me somebody. this was after the government had u shut down. that's right. i want you to find me a man or a woman that qualifies according to three criteria. number one, this person must have beened been -- been in the middling when the bomb went off. we're going leave the last ten minute or so of the event to go live to the u.s. senate. you can watch this and any c-span program online any time at c-span.org. the senate is about to gavel in to start the day. general speeches are scheduled,

but lot of evade and discussion on the government shut down expected. yesterday the house passed several targeted short-term spending bills to open part of the federal government. this is something senator reid declared a nonstarter in the senate. we hope to hear more from the democratic and republican leaders shortly. right now live to the senate floor on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. have mercy upon us, o god, and save us from the madness. we acknowledge our transgressi transgressions, our shortcomin shortcomings, our smugness, our

selfishness, and our pride. create in us clean hearts, o god, and renew a right spirit within us. deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable. remove the burdens of those who are the collateral damage of this government shutdown, transforming negatives into positives, as you work for the good of those who love you. we pray in your merciful name. amen.

the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., october 3, 2013. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable brian schatz, a senator from the state of hawaii, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, having received h.j. res. 7, 0, 71, and 73 from the house, the measures are considered to have received their second readings and objection to proceeding is

considered having been heard for purposes of rule 14. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 2:00 p.m. this afternoon. senators will be permitted to speak for up to ten minutes during that period of time. the first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. the republicans will first the first 30 minute minutes and the majority the second 30 minutes. mr. president, yesterday i made the speaker of the howrnghts john boehner, an offer i thought he couldn't refuse -- but he did. house republican leaders have demanded that the senate join nem ithem in a conference commie to work out budget differences. that seemed like a good idea to meevment that's why democrats yesterday ask consent to do

exactly that -- go to conference. mr. president, on anything. up to the 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 doesn't matter. in our agreement that we proposed to them, whatever you want to talk about. so i formally offered that, nirs a letter to the d. -- first in a letter to the speaker, then i talked to him and then came here to the floor and reiterated the offer. the conferees negotiate in the light of day. it shouldn't be too unreasonable. to my surprise, the speaker refused and the senate republicans objected. house republicans truly don't know what they want.

they can't take "yes" for an answer now. we've agreed to their budget number, which we thought should be higher. we agreed to that. they want to go to cmps. w-- they want to go to conference. we agreed to that. but, mr. president, they've had trouble agreeing to anything for quite sometime now. this spring after republicans loudly longing for a budget passed by the senate, and despite having a budget with the force of law, we decided let's give them their way. we wor worked hard, led by senar murray, with a budget completed at 5:00 in the morning. then senate democrats, following what they said, they, the republicans, said they wanted regular order, said hait said lo conference. they passed their budget. we passed ours. guess what? after all of this haranguing

about having a budget regular order, they decided they didn't like that so well. it was really very difficult to comprehend. when republicans finally got p what they said they wanted, it turned out they didn't want it after all. yesterday the same story. republicans asked to go to cfns on a budget. democrats agreed. the republicans okayed. these tactics truly, mr. president, are back to orwellian. they believe if you go east, you're really going west. if you go north, you're really going cannel. you're not going down, you're going up. whatever obviously they say doesn't really mean anything in reality. but, mr. president, maybe they really don't know what they want. maybe they don't have a game plan. and it's becoming more apparent every day.

one of the house republican tea party leaders, congressman from indiana by the name of stetsman, admitted this to one of the washington newspapers yesterday. here's what he said. this is a quote. listen to this, mr. president. here's what he said: "we're not going to be disrespected. we have to get something out of this." now listen to this the last phrase of this staivment "but i don't know what that is." hmmm ... if there's any way i disidisrespected him, or we disrespected him, we don't want that to happen. we apologize. they want to get something out of in? well, let's consider that. except they don't know what they want. a little hard to make a deal there, isn't it, mr. president? the republicans should come to their senses and realize there's more than wounded pride in line.

the longer this government shutdown persists, the harder it will be on our commitment o eco. i hope they can figure out what it is they want until the damage is even more irreversible than they've created. it is obvious the strain of self-inflicted shut down is wearing on republicans. pick up a paper. there were reports of vicious fienting. this is what one republican said after the meeting. "it was very evident to everyone in the room that the junior senator from texas doesn't have a stravment he never had a strategy and could never answer a question about what the end game was." just like stutzman from indiana -- that's the end of the quote, mr. president. that's the danger with the tea party. we're trying to get out of the catalyst that they created.

that they put us over, i should say. tea party republicans don't really want a way out of a 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 my statements about their being anarchists is pretty valid. they're glad the government is shut down. they don't believe in government. a government shutdown is the end game for them obviously. tea party republicans don't really want a way out of this government shutdown. they like it the way it is. but, mr. president, in addition to the statement coming from the republican senate caucus, there's some rumblings over in the house. more than 20 reasonable republicans in the house have said on the record that they're

ready to pass a way to fund this government right now. now, mr. president, i wasn't a math major, far from it, but i can count. if those 20 reasonable republicans unite with 200 house democrats, that's a majority in the house of representatives. that would engd th end the shutn nowvment so i have a message for my mainstream republican colleagues. if you ever hope to get out of this mess, if you ever hope to end this republican governmen gt shutdown, get rid of the tea party direction. work with us. help us reopen the government. we can start negotiations today. mr. president, as everyone knows, i think, i had a meeting well leader mcconnell, speaker boehner, and leader pelosi last night in the white house. the speaker said after the meeting -- of course it was

obvious during the meeting -- the only thing he cares about is obamacare. that's what this is about. they don't care about anything else. now, mr. president, we know what this government shutdown has done to our country already. general clapper, the leaders in our intelligence-gathering information around the world have stated that 72% of people who work in our intelligence agencies are home watching tv, reading a book. they're not at work protecting us from the bad people around the world ... and there are lots of them. we've talked about our national parks here. it's really been bad for people coming to nevada who want to do things in our parks. but not only for them, it's hurt business in nevada, as it has

around the country. n.i.h. -- mr. president, 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're at the end of the line and you're fortunate enough to be able to say, well, maybe there's still another chance; they're doing something back in washington at one of the national institutes of healths, maybe they can help you. well, not now. can't do it now because of the republicans. centers for disease control -- not a very glamourous-sounding name, but that's 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 -- i couldn't figure i out what the t

was. people were sick and dying. the center for disease control figured it out. it was because of pomegranate seeds. they work on these scurnlings every day. things come up that make people sick. we're in flu season nowvment they're not working on that. now, the second-in-command in the house of representatives, congressman cantor, said yesterday, well, that's okay. we no he that there's a lot of problems around our country with the shutdown. but we're going to one by one reopen those agencies. mr. president, it's so obvious -- it's so obvious. this is all directed toward president obama's signature legislation, obamacare.

they want to piecemeal this and wind up trying to hurt obamaca obamacare. even dr. coburn, who is a medical doctor, never known for being a shrinkin shrinking viols said this is not the way to go. obamacare is funded, except for maybe 10%. mr. president, we're willing to sit down and talk about anything they want to talk about in conference, but the government has to open first. it's time for my republican friends to defy your 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, mr. president, it wasn't very popular for them to do it anyway. every day that goes by, it is less popular. i it is a bad sign for the republicans. millions of americans visited federal marketplace exchanges the last few days. the demand is so high on some web sites they crashed. this is not unprecedented. google when they first started faced same challenges. 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 web site. more than 10,000 people 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've had republicans come here, "it's just so bad for the job market." mr. president, throughout the press today, take for example one out of the "new york times." speaker boehner said it's job-killing. ted cruz: it's hurting american people. senator mcconnell, it's a big reason we're turning into a nation of part-time workers. i'm not going to go through all the economists, but they all say the same thing. it doesn't hurt jobs at all. take, for example, mark zandi, moody's analytics, by the way, who was, when john mccain ran for president, was his chief economic advisor. here's what he said yesterday -- quote -- "i don't see any of obamacare impacting the job market." a man by the name of gregory

mankew, harvard economist who worked for george w. bush, when asked about how it would affect the economy. not a whole lot. mr. president, many more quotes but you get the picture. when the history books are written obamacare will be seen as the greatest step since medicare provided fairness to all americans. more americans learn about obamacare the more they like it and republicans should abandon their impractical quest to repeal it. it's been the law for four years.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: i want to start out with a point that is obvious to me but i think bears repeating. nobody wants this shut down. democrats say they don't 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 really truly divide us? that really divide us. the point i've been making all week is simply this, the only thing keeping the government from opening back up is the democrats' refusal to apply a simple 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're asking for at this point is a level playing field when it comes to obamacare. that's about the only thing standing in the way of the government opening back up. and it's a pretty reasonable request. and if washington democrats can't agree to that, then can

they at least join us in making sure 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's just the right thing to do. it responds directly to the concerns that a number of our democratic colleagues have raised and it's the same thing this congress voted to do just a couple of days ago with the brave men and women of our military. so i really 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's not interested in

negotiating. it was essentially a negotiation about not negotiating. and now we hear he's off campaigning today in rockville rather than sitting down to get this thing solved, which is certainly disappointing. but here's the good news. a solution isn't that far from reach. as i said, nobody wants a shutdown, so that's a good start. and it's hard to argue with what republicans are asking for, especially after the embarrassing, embarrassing rollout of 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 that she gave up. just literally gave up. here's the quote she gave afterwards. "it's 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 that the president already handed out to employers. the same break the president has already unilaterally given to employers. it's time for democrats to start acting responsibly. it's time to work with us and get our way out of this mess. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business for debate only until 2:00 p.m. with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the second 30 minutes, with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. mr. cornyn: mr. president? the presiding officer: republican whip. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i'd ask unanimous consent to be allowed to engage in a colloquy

with the republican leader, the senator from missouri if he wishes to join and the senator from south dakota during the 30 minutes allocated on our side. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: reserving the right to object. i came to the floor and am happy to do that but i was told there would be a consent agreement -- i'm sorry. consent asked. if that's not the case, you can do your colloquy and i'll come back when you want to do that. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: republican whip. mr. cornyn: for the information of the majority leader and anyone else who is interested, there will be some unanimous consent requests. we will front load those. and so the majority leader doesn't have to stay on the floor more than maybe about ten minutes if that suits his schedule. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: 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 that 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 at least they can agree to support our veterans. and so 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 h.j. res. 72 making continuing appropriations for veterans benefits for fiscal year 2014, that the measure be read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: reserving the right to object, mr. president. the presiding officer: the

majority leader. mr. reid: mr. president, my friend notes that no one wants to shut the government down. obviously he didn't listen to my statement. we have people who have been saying for days now, the republicans saying they're glad they've got a shutdown. they have been waiting for this for years. i even quoted the woman from minnesota that said that, congresswoman from minnesota. and congressman stetz from indiana tells us where the tea party is. he says "we're not going to be deposited. we have to -- we're not going to be disrespected. we've got to get something out of this and i don't know exactly what that is." republicans are throwing crazy ideas on the wall hoping maybe one of them will stick. they throw one idea and come up with another one in hopes

something will stick on that wall as they don't even know which wall they're throwing it on. the latest plan came from the junior senator from texas, is to cherry pick parts of the government he likes. house majority leader cantor admitted the strategy. according to him, this is what he likes -- and this is a quote. he was asked what about those cancer patients that need some help? he said, when asked, what about disadvantaged kids that want to return to their head start classes? he said -- this is a direct quote -- "that's coming as well. we're going to take every issue that has come up and put it on the floor." he is following cruz's idea specifically. senator cruz is now joint speaker. he lectures the house on occasion, as he does people over

here. mr. president, i -- we -- support veterans and parks and n.i.h. 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 f.b.i.. and we're not going to give a blank check to the junior senator from texas to pick his favorite person in government on a daily basis. today it's the parks. tomorrow it's n.i.h.. maybe later it will be something else. mr. schumer: would the leader yield for a question? mr. reid: i would be happy to. mr. schumer: i wanted to tpoupl on what he said. if -- follow up on what he said. if we were to go along with these u.c. requests -- a senator: objection. the presiding officer: is there an objection to the request? mr. reid: mr. president, reserving the right to object. here's the situation.

the junior senator from texas wants to fund everything else, just not obamacare. here's what one columnist said in "the washington post," dana millbank, -- quote -- "house republicans continue what might be called the lifeboat strategy, deciding which government functions are worth saving." and this is what they like: veterans, troops, tourist attractions out. poor children, every function that regulates business or requires people to pay taxes. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, is that an objection? mr. reid: i will use leader time, mr. president. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: if they are afraid to listen to this stuff 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. i'm going to say it. here's some of the functions not boarding the g.o.p. lifeboats. market regulation, chemical

spill investigation, antitrust enforcement, work site immigration checks, workplace safety inspections, environmental protection agency, nutrition for nine million children and pregnant women, flu monitoring and other functions, centers for disease control, and housing rental assistance for the poor. here's what else he wrote. that's quite a list the tea party swung out of the boat. we need to end the government shutdown. i say that without reservation. the key to opening the government remains the senate-passed funding resolution. we will talk about anything they want to talk about. we've said that. mr. president, i ask 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 on the table with no intervening action or debate. this amendment is a text that passed the senate and is a clean continuing resolution for the

entire government, and 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 reports as many as 100. the presiding officer: is there objection to the modified request? mr. mcconnell: i object. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. mr. reid: i object to -- the presiding officer: is there objection to the original request? mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the objection is heard. republican leader. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, with all due respect to my good friend, the majority leader, he was speaking about the junior senator from texas, who i don't see on the floor here 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. and i just would repeat, i was the one who requested consent that we provide relief to veterans during the shutdown, and the person to whom the

speech seemed to be directed i don't see on the floor at the moment. but with that, i know we're in the middle of a colloquy here, and the republican whip has a proposal to make. mr. cornyn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i just want to raise as a preliminary matter, under rule 19 of the senate rules, no senator shall in debate directly or indirectly by any form of words import to another -- impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbeing abouting a senator. i just want to remind all of our colleagues that when they talk about members of the united states senate who are not on the floor and not here and able to defend themselves, that i think, if not the letter of the rule, the spirit is in john paul did i of -- is in jeopardy of being

transgressed. i just think we don't want to head down that path. but i would just point out that we have witnessed really with some dismay many of our world war ii veterans being turned away at the world war ii memorial here in washington, d.c. now 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, and these gentlemen and ladies are quite advanced in years, and for many of them, like, for example, my father-in-law, who landed unked utah -- who landed on utah beach on the second day of the normandy invairks his physical health is not such that he could come. mr. durbin: will the senator yield for a question? mr. cornyn: i will not yield at this time.

i will at a later time. he would love to come visit the memorial, unfortunately his health is such that he can't. there will be a group coming here on tuesday and i intend to meet them and 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 p. so the house of representatives has passed a separate piece of legislation that would open up 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, and i would hope that it would enjoy the same kind of bipartisan support here in the united states senate. so, mr. president, i'd ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate

consideration of h.j. res. 70 making continuing appropriations for national park service operations, which was received from the house. i ask further that the measure be read three times and passed and that the the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: i ask that the statement i just made in response to senator mcconnell's consent agreement appear in the record following my objection. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: i object. the presiding officer: is there objection to the original request? mr. cornyn: mr. president, did the majority leader to be my unanimous consent request or seek to amend it? the presiding officer: the objection has not yet been hired. is there objection? -- has not yet been heard. is there objection? mr. reid: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. cornyn: i recognize my colleague from missouri and

south dakota, who i know also have unanimous consent requests, and i would yield to them for those. mr. blunt: i thank my friend from texas for yielding. on monday morning i was scheduled to be at washington university in st. louis, missouri, to look at some of their research. a lot of the research that n.i.h. does has been done in our state. a third of the research for the human genome project has been done in our state. on tuesday evening for the fifth year in a row i was at the fund-raising event for the national institute of the -- the children's inn at the national institutes of health, where family and children can stay there for treatment. it was a great event where lots of money was raised for those kids. i said at that event that if somebody told me years ago if everybody is 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 place where people help families deal with the one problem they have. as vitter lit every member -- as virtually every member of this senate has said, the work at the n.i.h. is important. it is important that it continue. the house yesterday passed a house joint resolution that would continue that work. and, mr. president, i'd ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of h.j. res. 73 making continuing appropriations for the national institutes of health for the fiscal year 2014. i ask further consent that the measure be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. spher officer is there objection? the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. durbin: reserving the right to object, i am going to make a countertouser the gentleman from -- the senator from missouri, which is even

better. it is going to open the national institutes of health, the centers for disease control, all of the medical research at the department of defense. l we're going to make sure that all of the medical research and medical services in the federal government in every agency aat 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 up all of these medical services. and, therefore, i ask consent that the request be modified as follows: that an amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, the joint resolution as amended then be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid on 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, reportedly has the support of the majority 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. the presiding officer: is there objection to the modified request? mr. blunt: reserving the right to object, i would just remind my good friend from illinois that there was a time when actually 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. c.r., continuing rcialtion is not the best way to $the business of the country. and i would object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. is there objection to the original why? mr. durbin: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. cornyn: i yield to the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: mr. president, the men and women who serve in our nation's armed services 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 in to law by the president this past monday. that bill ensures that the active military and those that

support them stay on the job regardless of the dysfunction here in washington. congress was right, mr. president, to pass the legislation, and president obama was right to immediately sign it into law enforcement today the house of representatives is going to pass h.r. 3230, 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 when called upon. these men and women proudly serve this country and they should not be impacted by spending disagreements here in washington. today the senate has a chance to give these individuals and their families greater certainty by passing h.r. 32030 as soon as it is received from the house. now, i'm sorry to hear that the majority and the president have already indicated that they're 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've already done for our active duty troops. i this i that is a big mistake -- i think that is a big mistake, mr. president. i would ask unanimous consent that when the senate receives h.r. 3230, to provide pay and allowance to the reserve components of the armed and guard services that the measure be read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: mr. president, i would ask that the senator from illinois, the chairman of the appropriations committee this a, the subcommittee on defense, respond. mr. durbin: mr. president, reserving the right to object, i'm going it 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 800,000 furloughed employees, over half a million of them are veterans, and a fourth of those veteran federal employees are

disabled. now i'm going to give the gentleman from south dakota an opportunity to put them all back to work immediately, every one of them, including paying the reservists and everything he suggested. i ask consent that the request of the gentleman -- the senator from south dakota be modified as follows: that an amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, that the bill as amend then be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be laid on 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 over a half a million veterans and easer 10-- and over 100,000 disabled veterans back to work. it is already in the house and has the support of the majority of the house of representatives. mr. thune: as the senator from illinois has already pointed out, that's alrea already passee

senate. that's already in the house and not being acted on. what the senate can act upon is legislation being sent here from the house that would ensure that our national guard and reserve troops are treated the same way as our active duty troops are treated. and i think that's only fair. it is only fitting. these are people who not only respond to domestic dassters but also are involved in conflicts overseas son a regular basis. i would object. the presiding officer: the objection is heard to the modified request. is there objection to the original request? mr. durbin: mr. president, on behalf of the half a million veteran federal imleerks emploa fourth of whom are disabled, i object. mr. blunt: how much is remaining in our allocated time? the presiding officer: 13 minutes. mr. cornyn: i grew up in an air force family. my dad served in world war ii in the army air complete as i mentioned on this floor many times, he continued to serve for 31 years in the united states air force. and so, as fate would have it,

he was transferred to tochikowa air force base while i was in high scoovment i became acquainted with this 17th century stylized form of drama and dancing called kabuki. and the thing about kabuki is that the audience ooohs and ahhhhs as the dancers carry out this stylized form of drama and dance. but what we've seen here on this government shutdown, contrived as it is is a form of kabuki. we know exactly what's happening here. 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 that the president has unilaterally given to employers to delay the implementation of obamacare for one year when it comes to the individual mandate. that's what the majority has objected to. that's what the majority leader in a party-line vote has tabled. and that's 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 here 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 being -- 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. so i would just ask my colleagues who are here on the floor, both of whom serve with great distinction in the house of representatives, whether they believe that the house has acted in good faith, whether they've 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 would ask the senator from missouri to respond first. mr. blunt: well, i would just say to my friend from texas that, until the leadership in the senate changed -- the current leadership -- seven year, we always did

appropriations by debating and advancing individual things. the idea that we would only do this by -- we don't want to debate anything, if we don't debate anything? that makes no sense. it is not the way the government should run. i think the house is not only well-intended, but their goal is a worthy goal. the national institutes of health, the house of representatives led by republicans beginning in 1995 doubled -- doubled -- n.i.h. funding in ten years. my good friend from south dakota and i were there for the majority of that ten-year doubling of n.i.h. funding. last year in the appropriations committee markup, i voted for a bill that would add $1 billion extra to n.i.h. funding. it was defeated in the committee. this year i voted for a bill that would add almost $1.5 billion of additional funding to n.i.h. funding. this makes a difference in the lives of people.

francis collins, the director of n.i.h., dr. francis collins, has estimated that each week that 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. every week of a shutdown. i know that they took the children and the individuals coming monday and tuesday, but are now beginning to notify people, if you were scheduled to come, we've got 4,000 people working and 14,000 people not working. we can't accept you right now. and i think this is the right thing to do. it's an easy thing to do if we would just stand up and do it. if we don't oppose n.i.h. -- and i don't believe there is a senator that does -- why don't we continue their funding and do it right now. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i would ask the senator from missouri, 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's provided by the n.i.h. for children who are suffering from cancer. i would just ask the senator from missouri, is the bill that the house has passed and that you asked consent that the senate consider, would it address the very same sort of cancer research for children that the assistant majority leader was arguing for yesterday? mr. cornyn: i was impressed by my -- mr. blunt: i was impress bid my friend from illinois' comments yesterday. i'm for n.i.h. funding. i never failed to vote for n.i.h. funding. i never failed to vote for an amendment that would increase n.i.h. funding, as far as i know. i've seen it increase dramatically. and opening the doors of that research facility is the right thing to do. we can do it today. i can't imagine the president wouldn't sign a bill that let

three-quarters of that workforce go back to work and let the 200 people that will be turned away in the next seven days be told instead come on, be part of this process. we're waiting for you. we're here. we're doing the kinds of things that your family critically needs us to do. mr. cornyn: i would ask the senator from south dakota, i know south dakota has a lot of uniformed military, and the senator has already addressed a piece of legislation that's passed the house and come over here. is it your impression that the house is trying to address some of the hardships and inconvenience in some cases, hardships in others, that are caused by the government shutdown? in your experience, are are they being reasonable in demonstrating their good faith in trying to break this impasse? mr. thune: i would say to our distinguished whip, the senator from texas, that that is exactly correct. the house of representatives has moved several pieces of

legislation and will this morning that address some of the, 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 just point out too in addition to taking care of our guard and reserve troops as we have, our active duty troops is real important. all of us have guard units and families who are impacted by this. 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 up the world war ii memorial for veterans on their honor flight. he rejected their appeal to visit the memorial that's dedicated to their service, an opportunity to honor their brothers in arms, many of whom died in that great war. i'm pleased that the veterans, not ones to be defeated, breached the barricades and took their memorial. i've had the opportunity, my father is a world war ii navy fighter pilot, to be able to show him some of these memorials

that we have and monuments here in washington, d.c., particularly that one that was erected in the honor of his generation. but they shouldn't be denied the honor of visiting these monuments to their service. and so, mr. president, i guess what i would say is when we're thinking about that generation of americans, senator mcconnell put forward today an opportunity 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 and waoeptd to make sure that -- we want to make sure that those great generations who have served our country, defended our country around the world have the access to the programs, the benefits that have been assured and promised them. and so i think it's unconscionable, unacceptable that we not agree to allow those service to continue to be funded. and i'm very disappointed to see our colleagues on the democrat side resist and object to that motion here this morning, because if anything, if any

group of people in this country deserves to have the respect and also the promises, honor the promises we made to them, it is those american veterans. i think if you look at the last shutdown in 1995 and 1996, president bill clinton came to the table that supported legislation to protect veterans programs. i hope we could get cooperation from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do that today. mr. cornyn: mr. president, how much time remains? the presiding officer: three minutes. mr. cornyn: i thank my colleague from missouri for making important points. i know the bicameral leadership in 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 this floor the president announced he wasn't going to negotiate.

bizarre. why would the president called the republicans and the democratic leadership to the house to say i'm not going to negotiate? was it for a photo stphaoupbt was it to -- photo opportunity? you know, i hope that the president reconsiders leaving town while the government is shut down, in the words of the majority leader, and leaves for a trip to asia while, as our distinguished democratic colleagues have pointed out, many federal employees are furloughed during this government shutdown. my hope would be that the president would cancel his trip and he'd stay here in washington like we are and try to solve this problem and break this impasse. and these proposals that we've made here today, many of which have been voted on, of course, by the house of representatives in a bipartisan fashion, are designed to do exactly that. to break this impasse.

what's the white house's response to some of the earlier proposals? they sent out a statement of administration policy saying if it's passed, i'd veto it. that's president barack obama. now, 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's not leadership to convene a meeting of republicans and democrat leadership at the white house, say i'm not going to negotiate. oh, by the way, i'm leaving town on saturday. good luck. that leaves me to conclude that the president and his party are actually enjoying this shutdown. because what they see in this is partisan political gain. they read the public opinion polls just like we do. but i don't think the american people should be fooled, and they're not being fooled. house republicans and republicans in the senate have made numerous reasonable proposals only to be given the

heisman. and the president's not negotiating, and the government remains shut down. the president needs to stay here, demonstrate leadership, continue meeting with leaders on both sides of the capitol, and we can break through this impasse. get the money to children's cancer research, get the money for the troops, open up 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. and we ought to be all working together toward that end. the presiding officer: the republican time is expired. under the previous order, having received from the house h.r. 3233 which is identical to s. 1566, the bill is considered read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid on the table. assistant majority leader. mr. durbin: mr. president, there are two sides to every story. i'd like to say before he leaves the floor to my friend -- and he

is my friend -- from texas, i was at the world war ii memorial yesterday with an honor flight from illinois. there was no barricades stopping them from going to the memorial. so the characterizations on the floor that these veterans were stopped is not true. it's not accurate. i hope the record will reflect that. the reason why there's 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 six weeks. we passed it here in the senate. the house speaker, mr. boehner, refuses to call it for a vote. there is a majority, democrats and republicans, ready to vote for it, ready to reopen the government, no questions asked about the n.i.h., about the barricades at the world war ii memorial which were there originally. all of these questions would be resolved. three times this morning now the republicans have objected to bringing that measure up for another vote in the united states senate. that worries me. let me say one other thing about

the affordable care act, the insurance exchanges. 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 up for obamacare and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts the post reports she gave up. i've got good news for the senator from kentucky. when you look across the united states of america at the insurance exchanges that have been opened, he should have, 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 that we just received this morning from the secretary of the governor's cabinet for health, audrey haines, in kentucky. the kentucky insurance exchange,

which the republicans want to close down, has had 117,000 unique visitors, 109 prescreenings to determine qualifications for health insurance, 13,000 kentuckians already in two days, 13,000 have applied for health coverage. 8,000 are not complete. this is great news. they're leading the country. kentucky should be so proud. 122 small businesses have applications, three and a half thousand new families have been enrolled. apologize we haven't been able to process things as quickly in any state. but the overwhelming positive public response skraos -- across america to what they call obamacare is an indication of pentup demand in kentucky, illinois and every state for people to finally get access to

health insurance. mr. president, 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 to negotiate and we should, about important issues, the issues the senator from washington addressed in this budget. let's address all those issues. let's do it in a bipartisan, thoughtful, adult manner. telling 800,000 federal employees to go home is really unfair to this nation and it's unfair to them and it doesn't speak well of all of them. i left a committee hearing this morning. wendy sherman, assistant secretary of state, widely respected, we were talking about the threat of iran as a nuclear power. sheep said with some -- she said with some regret the government shutdown is hurting us to stop the development of nuclear weapons in iran. how? 90% of 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% of those federal employees have been furloughed in the department of treasury because of the government shutdown. and 72%, almost three-fourths, of all the men and women in 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 which literally jeopardizes the security of the united states of america. for goodness sakes, let's put this government back in business before the end of this day. i yield the floor. mrs. murray: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: mr. president, i want to thank the senator from illinois for reminding all of us , the many, many people and communities and 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. mr. president, i am frustrated like every american today, thinking why can't our government work. why can't people come together? as chair of the budget committee i've been out here 19 times since last march saying let's go to conference committee and resolve our differences. 19 times members of the republican party have said no. they have not allowed us to go talk. so now we find ourselves in a mess. and the government is shut down, and families are hurting, and communities are hurting, and our economy is hurting. so what is the response now of republicans in the house of representatives and here on the floor? well, 00. ops, we didn't mean to hurt everybody. we're we have a few months we're going to take care of.

i've 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. and i am as passionate as anyone about our veterans. there is not one member of this united states senate that doesn't fully support our military and our veterans. no one questions that. but, mr. president, i take a back seat 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 earn add purple heart and was one of the first soldiers into okinawa, as a young woman myself during the vietnam war working in the seattle veterans hospital with men and women coming home my age from the war, with so much work i have done on this floor, working with our hundreds of thousands of vents who are coming home -- of veterans who

are coming home from the current conflicts, passing legislation that they have what they need to make sure that we don't just say "thank you" but we serve them well. so i take a back seat to no one on veterans issues. if 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. no one behind. and 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're going to pay their bills because this government is

shorshut down. mr. president, 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 by shutting off, closing our arms, and saying, we're 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. so, mr. president, in front of the house today is a solution to this. it is the senate-passed bill that is supported by a majority in the house and would pass today if it was brought up and a majority in this senate today as well to open up our government, put people back to work, and then we will go to conference, we will work out our agreements in the way that we -- our children expect us to do.

let's be an example, as adults, to families across this country, to young people across this country that when you have a disagreement, you work together at a conference table and set aside your differences and find a solution for the country. you don't do it by saying, i'm not going to let anybody go to work until i get my way. which is what the house of representatives ha is doing. mr. president, we can get this done. as i talked about yesterday, i am a former preschool teacher, and i've seen this kind activity before. we all see our kids go out and make a mess in their room and then go, gosh, how did that happen? that's what we're hearing from the other side today. well, gee, how come we haven't passed any aeption pros bills? well, -- any appropriations bills? well, wow, if we had a budget passed, woul we wouldn't be her?

well, time after time, we've been blocked by the very same tea party republicans who today have put use in this shutdown and said, my way or the highway; you either repeal obamacare or this country hurts. mr. president, that is not what we should be doing. let's tell our veterans, let's tell our military, let's tell our head start moms, let's tell our 800,000 employees, let's tell everybody in this country we are a country that can work, we're at birks open ou businessr doors, pass legislation in the house, and then we will work out our disagreements. hard as it is, we can do that. i hope that's the focus we have today. i say to speaker boehner, bring up the bill and pass it and allow us to get back to work. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. ms. mikulski: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. kill culms. mikulski: i rise tok in morning business. how much ti time is left? the presiding officer: 1 minutes. ms. mikulski: thank you, mr. president. i rise today in a twofold role.

number one, i am here under my constitutionally designated responsibility as the senator from maryland, duly elected, duly certified. i love representing maryland. 5.5 million people of just one of the most wonderful, patriotic, hardworking, fill l.a.n. thropically community--- fill aphilanthropic communities. we have one of the largest civilian agencies in america. they have wonderful names, yes, like the national institutes of health, like the national institutes of standards that help set the standards that enable the private sector to be able to develop the products that they can sell around the world. we're the home to the nuclear regulatory agency, we're the 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're not flammable. i could listen those agencies -- the census, the weather service, the fishery service that helps keep our seafood industry in operation. so, mr. president, i have a lot of federal employees, and they are asking me, what are they doing? well, what i'm telling them is that the other side -- one faction in one party in one house ohouse of government is prohibiting really a reopening of our government because of their failure to take up the senate resolution, the senate continued funding resolution, which would reopen government for six weeks while we work out our fiscal problems. now, their solution is to do

this piecemeal. piecemeal does not work. you either have an open government -- you cannot do this not only one agency -- you cannot do this one agency at a time. now, weren't we proud of our world war ii veterans and how plucky, spunky they were when they essentially broke the line to be able to see a memorial in their honor? absolutely. when the park service put that band up around it, they were operating under the orders of what a shutdown is. now, u un unofficially, that wod war ii memorial is open. when we say, aren't we proud of our veterans? yes. don't blame the park service for closing the memorial. blame the others for shutting down government. and for our veterans who wanted to see the memorial on their -- the salute to them, the greatest

generation, who fought world war ii, they should not have to worry about their own government. so then the other side says, well, we're going to fund veterans' benefits. you cannot fund veterans' benefits without reopening social security and, yes, i.r.s. i have looked and investigated and worked with my committee on why did the veterans have such a backlog for disability benefits? one of the ways you process a claim is not only what the veteran says, but they have to get paperwork from the social security agency and the internal revenue service to be able to process the claim. so you can beat the drum, raise the flag, sound the bugle, all that you want to say that you want to fund veterans' benefits, but unless you reopen social security and the internal revenue service, you are still

placing our veterans at a disadvantage. you need to reopen the whole government. while they're doing their piecemeal approach, they're so busy showing off and trying to show thei they're pro defending america, they passed a bill to make sure the military gets paid. sure, what american would not want our troops in harm's way to not get paid? sure, we're for that. but they wanted it to be so showbiz, they forgot the national guard. now we're coming with the piec piecemeal approach to add the national guard. i love the national guard. we're the home of the fighting 29th. they were heroes in world war ii, and they've been heroes in every war since then. i want to see the national guard helped, but now they're kind of johnny-come-latelies to this piecemeal approach because in their fast-track showbiz,

showoff approach, they forgot the national guard. oh, wasn't that a cool thing to do? so i support what senator reid just did, when each and every one of those piecemeal bills to add the continuing funding resolution to open all of government. now, yes -- the last few days we've 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 dreaded diseases affecting american people here and also around the world. alzheimer's, autism-- you know, in a few weeks we'll be racing for the cure. well, let's reagan administration to open government. so -- wrl, let's race to open government. now we show how in their disdain for civilian agencies, n.i.h.

was closed down. so now they're coming in with the piecemeal approach to reopen n.i.h. u do i want n.i.h. open? absolutely. over 70% of the people who work there have been laid off. 070%. last -- 70%. last year, the n.i.h. announced through its work and its research, working with wonderful academic centers around this nation and our private sector to develop biotech and pharmaceutical products, cancer rates in the united states remember reduced by 15%. with all that work, they've now been furloughed. you say, well, senator barb, do the piecemeal. boy, i'd love to. but if n.i.h. workers were here to say, if you open up, it's a hollow opportunity -- a hollow opportunity -- unless you open f.d.a. we do the basic research in

these -- at our institutes. but somebody's got to take that research and make use of it in either medical devices, biotech products or pharmaceuticals of the they then go through clinical trials, because we want that whatever you put on your body or in your mouth to help you, is safe and effective. the fathe food and drug adminisn does that. so you can lead to new and incredible solutions for people in pain, agony and suffering. but unless we can put it into clinical trials and have it go to the f.d.a., it is a hollow opportunity. so if you're going to reopen n.i.h., you have to reopen f.d.a. and guess what, f.d.a. is furloughed. f.d.a. is furloughed.

now, we pay a good part of f.d.a. through fees, pharmaceutical fees, medical device fees. but guess what? on shutdown, the government is even prohibited from collecting the fees that it's owed. what is this? what is this? this is show biz politics. show biz politics. this is not pragmatic solutions. so, mr. president, we need to reopen government, we open the entire government so we can do the job that 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 to each cherry-pick individual item offered the comprehensive solution that would reopen our government. now, mr. president, this isn't only affecting government

workers, because government workers actually affect the economy. right this very minute, the president has been in rockville, maryland. 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 -- that's the road in montgomery county and clustered around it are some of the greatest civilian agencies in the world. he was going to visit a minority woman-owned contractor and asphalt contractor owned by the luis family. wonderful family, an american success story. came to this country with little money in their pocket but big dreams in their heart to have freedom and the opportunity to open a business. they've opened an asphalt contracting business which really gets most of its business from local, state and the government for roads. they're the infrastructure people. what we are doing by not coming up with a way to keep our

government open, cancel sequester and really move legislation to really fund our fiscal infrastructure, it's dramatically affecting them. right around rockville pike are several agencies. i've given you their names. the national institutes of standards, the nuclear regulatory agency, the consumer product safety agency. that is affecting business up and down rockville pike. people aren't buying their groceries, they're not buying gas. i'm going to say more about that in a little while. you remember that social security agency i just talked about? it's in a neighborhood called woodlawn in baltimore. 9,000 -- 9,000 -- social security workers in baltimore and around the country have been furloughed. right near them is the c.m.s. agency which also looks out for our medicare. and a few blocks from social

security is the f.b.i. field office. those f.b.i. agents are on the job -- on the job -- but they're being paid with i.o.u.'s. did you know that because of what we've had to do with our budget, they don't even have gas for the f.b.i. cars? a reasonable book called "voices from the field field," the fib s have spoken out about what's happening to them, that when they go to get this their car to chase a bad guy or gal, they have to pay for their own gas. what kind of government is this? for all that pomp, all that pomp and strut? the ridicule of our federal employees? and now they're -- this shutdown is humiliating our country and humiliating the people who work for our government and so on. now, across this nation and in

my own state, because of thousands of federal employees being furloughed or paid in i.o.u.'s, they are hurting business. i'm the daughter of a small business owner. my father owned a small grocery store. i'm 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 you help you"? i know what it's like to be in the retail food business and i understand what it's like for when your customers are facing the fact that they're unemploy unemployed. these mom-and-pop stores to the larger agencies are being affected. the government shutdown threatens our progress. we know in 1995 and 1996 it cut our consumer -- it cut our gross domestic product. the shutdown can cost our

economy as much as $10 -- $10 billion a week. every week the small business administration, because its shut down, can't -- because it's shut down, can't process loan or give technical assistance to small business. the international trade association, which is supposed to help our people sell things around the world, and my manufacturing sector, what's left of it, has told me how important our foreign commercial service officers are, that's shut down -- that has shut down that agency. the department of labor processes applications for visas, for farms, for seafood processors like in my own state. business typically files for visas two and three months to advance. because of the shutdown, it's going to affect everybody from citrus farmers in the south to those people who have new england ski resorts. now, people might say, oh, that's a gucci job. a gucci job in new england in a

ski resort? i don't think so. it's very important to vermont and new hampshire, to citrus farmers down south. we have to reopen government. the way we reopen government is by a -- not by a piecemeal approach but by passing the senate -- for the house to take up the senate resolution. mr. chairman, i have a lot more to say and i will say it during the day. i note that my colleague from rhode island is on the floor, senator reed. he's a member of the appropriations committee and a member of the defense authorization committee, a staunch defender of people wh who -- he's been so out spoke own the need for student loans -- outspoken on the need for student loans. he's also been so outspoken on the need for energy assistance to poor people with the come winter. and so he's been a defender of america, a graduate of west

point, and he's been defending -- he's been a defender of the little guy and the little gal who should have a government on his side. i'm going to make sure he has a chance to talk. i'll be back later on. i yield the floor. mr. reed: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. first let me commend the chairwoman for her extraordinary leadership in so many different ways. her articulate explanation of the crisis we face at the moment, her compelling argument that a piecemeal approach to resolving the government shutdown will not work since the pieces are so critically interrelated. and, mr. president, i rise, too, to speak about this government shutdown. today is day three of the republican government shutdown and it seems increasingly clear that speake speaker boehner is g to drag this out long enough of the government shutdown with brinksmanship or whether to pay

our nation's bills. this is an attempt to gut existing law and put the full faith and credit of the united states is no way to run a country. we are -- if we are dragged into the comingling of the republican government shown and republicand 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 that we should even contemplate. so we have to move very quickly to a resolution of this manufactured crisis. and when i hear discussion of what's going on, the terms that are used, "reckless," "irresponsible" and indeed words much worse than these all across this country, the bottom line, mr. president, is that the average american is just fed up. they expect government to open, to serve them, to perform its

basic functions. not selected functions but its full range of functions. survey after survey notes two simple things. one, the government should be reopened for business. is, two, the effort by some to secretary 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. mr. president, there is a very simple solution here -- pass a short-term continuing resolution at current levels with spending so then we can begin the process of resolving the budget impasse. let me say that again. pass a bill that funds the government at the current level of spending. doing so means keeping, in effect, the sequester, something 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 and the leader of those discussions have been 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 that i supported last march. regrettably, the tea party has refused to allow negotiations on the budget. and we heard day in and day out complaints by our colleagues in a previous session of congress that we need a bug, we need a budget -- we need a budget, we need a budget, we need a budget. well, we produced a budget. and now we're being blocked. what is happening instead of moving to meaningful, comprehensive budget negotiations is that we are in a shutdown of the government and then republican caucus now is trying to extricate themselves from this manufactured crisis at their hands by sending over

piecemeal bills to fund preferred and selected provisions of the government. and as the chairwoman pointed out, it doesn't work because the government's related. because n.i.h. can make this government. but if the f.d.a. is not authorizeauthorized and operatiy can approve the use, it doesn't work. you can't soarlt o sort of disae these things. we saw today in rhode island about 20,000 women and children are potentially going to lose their w.i.c. benefits, their nutrition benefits, their -- their support. ignoring them and helping others is not going to benefit this country. in fact, it will contribute i think to the decline. now, they've looked at the national guard, they looked at veterans benefits, they looked at national parks. those are all worthy elements but they're not the entire range of functions that we must perform. now, i believe on the other side

that they're just trying to come up with some type of coherent argument for their actions. is this about the debt? we've made progress in reducing our deficit. because of actions that we have taken, we have reduced projected deficit over 10 years by $2.4 trillion. do we have to do more? yes. but we have to do it in a cohairntd, thoughtful -- in a coherent, thoughtful way. is it about the sequester? well, that's talk about the sequester. let's talk about it in the context of a budget and appropriations bill for 2014. and is it about the affordable care act? well, it's begun. there's been a huge demand in the first few days. and it's working through problems -- and there will be problems. there's no major initiative of this kind that is not rolled out by any business and/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 sor sort of an ad hoc way opg up parts is no way to operate. it's unfair to the american people who aren't getting services. they expect service. it's also unfair to furloughed employees and the defense department and elsewhere. not just the defense department but all the 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 up. the speaker can call that vote up within less than an hour. get it on the floor. and go ahead and reopen our government and then reopen the thoughtful, careful, collaborative discussions about where we're going in terms of our budget, in terms of our deficit, in terms of serving the

american people. i've heard a lot of talk about, oh, we've got to have negotiations and procee compromt cetera. now, i've supported legislation and i believe in it strongly, i've opposed legislation, but i don't think i've ever sort of stood up and said, "it's either my way or nothing happens." that's not the way to -- 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 it's -- in democracy, it's the majority ultimately, after we go through our procedural convolutions, it's the majority ultimately that prevails. and there is a strong sense, as reflected in the newspapers, that the majority of the house of representatives want this situation resolved. they want all government agencies opened up. and through the procedural votes on this side, it's 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 9 american people -- are with the american people. we just have to get the leadership of the house to get with the american people. now, we have to talk about some of the these serious issues, but i said the best play to do so in my view here -- best place to do so in my view here is in the context of the budget negotiations. and we have been blocked repeatedly from bringing the budget to conference. in fact, our republican colleagues -- and i'll give them credit. many of them have stood up and said, we've got to go to the -- to the budget negotiations, the conference mccain, for example, said, "it's not the regular order for a small number of senators, a minority within a minority leader, to say they will not go to conference." and that's what's happening. it's happening in the house, in terms a minority of the house members who are demanding that

the speaker not relent on this government shutdown. and it's happening here to a degree with respect to the conference committee on the budget. we have to go ahead and do our job. now, we've had colleagues on the other side talk about how the impact of some of these closures are detrimental. in fact, the member representing yosemite national park was very sad it was closed. i'm also distressed it's closed. i'm the chair of the subcommittee that authorizes funding for the national parks. we do our best to maintain the parks, to make sure we support those individuals who work for the park service. and i understand that the impact is not just within the confines of the park. it is the businesses all around the park. that's what we said a week ago. that's what i said a week ago asking in terms of our deliberations that we pass a continuing resolution. 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's about all of the functions of government. it's about those women and children who receive benefits from the w.i.c. program. it's about those federal workers that are furloughed, that can't perform their duties. we have to go ahead and open up our government. and we have to basically recognize what a democracy ultimately is all about. it's the will of the american people, the majority of the american people, that has to be reflected ultimately by the representatives and the senators. and, again, i think it's 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'm told by the technology, is an amazing number. there were 2,000 calls to our call center, people 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 don't move forward, s.b.a. lending is effectively cut off. small business men and women struggling to get their businesses going, keep it going, and hire americans won't have that ability to receive support from the s.b.a.. we need, as they say and everyone has become familiar with this term arcs -- term, a clean c.r. that opens everything up. if we don't, the impact will be

dramatic. in 2011 economists estimated a shutdown would cost the economy .2% g.d.p. each week. looking back to 1995-1996 when a republican house also shut down the government for 27 days it reduced g.d.p. growth by roughly .5%. those are jobs, not just statistics. those are lots of jobs. and confidence in our economy. and if we don't have jobs and confidence, then we're not doing our job, our job, and we're not fulfilling what we were sent here by the people to do. grow the economy. give us work. give us confidence that you at least can perform the basic tpufrpb tions of government. -- basic functions of government. now, we have to move forward. i'm 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 six 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. and 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 can't be so preoccupied that we don't sense it. foreign affairs issues in syria, foreign affairs issues across the globe, international economic issues, future competitive issues with other economies. and while we are fixated and focused on this manufactured crisis, which is completely

unnecessary, we're not doing the important work. we're not anticipating the problems that are developing right now in the world or in our economy. we're not investing in jobs and in job creation. we are not looking ahead, and we have to do that also. madam president, i would urge a quick decisive vote on a continuing resolution so that we can get back to the business of leading america. and with that, i would yield the floor. mr. blumenthal: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: 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 americans in the private as well as public sector at work so that they can meet the obligations of their families. we have developing a situation in america where more and more the ripple effect of this shutdown will affect private employees, not just the federal and government workers who are told to go home. and told they can't do their jobs. as i've said repeatedly, we need to end the hostage-taking tactics by one small faction of one party in one branch of this

branch of government, one house of this branch of government. and the ripple effects of this shutdown are beginning to grow across america. last night united technologies, the largest employer in connecticut, announced that it has been forced to furlough thousands of employees. starting initially with more than 1,500 at its sick -- orsky facility in stratford which makes blackhawk helicopters, thousands of others may be at risk. and defense manufacturers all across the nation, this political gamesmanship and budget brinkmanship has stopped production of the blackhawk helicopters, an iconic symbol to all our service members that

help is on the way. they are the ones who transport troops into combat, rescue the wounded and deliver supplies to the most inaccessible and inhospitable parts of the earth. blackhawk 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 right-wing extremists idealogues in the house of representatives, one part of this congress, one branch of the government. and they are not certifying, 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 united states military can take delivery of those helicopters. my hope is that 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 that those helicopters are the best in the world, as they have always been, and that they can be delivered to our military and 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 that they face all across the globe. and they need and deserve those helicopters. but even if we put those sikorsky workers back on their jobs tomorrow, the needless chaos and confusion caused by the shutdown is an outrageous and inexcusable dereliction by those small right-wing 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've seen those parts and components used on those assembly lines by those sikorsky workers. if sikorsky isn't using those

parts and components, workers in those suppliers will be furloughed as well or worse. we're talking about men and women who live, many of them, paycheck to paycheck. they don't have huge savings. they may well, in fact probably won't be paid for the time that they are furloughed. and 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 in the n.i.h. 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 checks 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've warned of the effects on job creation and economic growth repeatedly before and after the shutdown has occurred. in addition to the vital services that are imperilled and impacted, these economic effects on job creation and recovery are irreparable. they affect people's lives. there are real consequences to real people. i've called on this body to let compromise and cooler heads prevail and end those ripple effects and the shutdown and this self-inflicted wound before it becomes an economic tsunami. i hope that 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 spent a lot of time in this body talking, and it's time that 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 the voices of our local communities who are seeing the harm of this shutdown. jim finley, c.e.o. of the connecticut conference of municipal 'tis said yesterday, our poorest communities, they are the ones who are going to feel the hit first. end of quote. and that's because the women, infants and children program and housing vouchers for low-income families are just two of the programs that make the social

safety network and help people most in need. the w.i.c. program provides food assistance to more than 58,000 low-income, pregnant women, mothers and children in connecticut. listen to the mayor of hartford who said -- quote -- "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." end of quote. recently newtown and monroe, along with other connecticut communities, received federal grants to hire local police officers. so listen to monroe first selectman steve averett who said he has no money -- 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 the 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. and like 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. and finally, let me just

emphasize one of the very important unintended consequences of action that we have taken or failed to take. when congress passed the resolution to pay our troops, we intended to cover all the men and women who wear the uniform, all who served in our military forces, including all categories of national guard service. unfortunately, some are not covered in actual practice. and 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 or woman who wears the uniform, every man and

woman who serves in our military should be fade and paid on time -- should be paid and paid on time now. and i am committed to making sure that our department of defense and our united states 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 that our democracy functions in the service of people. let's keep faith with them as well as with the american people and let us do our work by making sure that we put the american government back to work and make sure the country is at work. let the house vote. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor.

mr. lee: madam president? officer the senator from utah. mr. lee: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate receives h.j. res. 72, making continuing appropriations for veterans benefits for 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. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: madam president, reserving right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. a senator: madam president, it's my understanding that the senator is proposing to allow for appropriations to move forward for a portion of veterans funding. mr. murphy: let me just say a few things. it's clearly a hardship that the shutdown is going to result in a diminution of benefits to our veterans, and i appreciate the senator coming to the floor to try to address that today. but it'but as my colleague from

connecticut just mentioned, there's already an unmentionable hardship for workers that are going to be furloughed on friday because of this shutdown. it's also an unacceptable hardship to thousands of head start children who are going to show up to their preschool being closed. it's an unacceptable hardship to millions of frail elderly who are going to have their nutritional benefits compromised. and so i think that we can all agree that the consequences of the shutdown are unacceptable to our veterans. they're unacceptably, though, to a plan pli t panoply to thousanr workers throughout the country. and i believe that the resolution that the senator is asking to be passed provides only partial funding for the

v.a. there's no funding for the cemeteries. there's no funding for the board of appeals. there's no funding for the v.a. clinics or hospital. there's no funding to operate the i.t. systems that the entire v.a. needs in order to continue going forward. and so, madam president, i would actually offer and ask consent that the gentleman's request be modified that an amendment which is at the desk be agreed to, that the joint resolution as as amended then be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table with no intervening action or debate. this is the amendment that passed the senate and it's the clean continuing resolution for the entire government. and something that's already over in the house and reportedly, madam president, has the majority of the members of the house of representatives. this would solve the problems that i'm sure the senator's going to talk about with respect to certain veterans but would also solve all these other problems, would make sure that we continue to have funding for the operation of the national

cemeteries, continue to build hospitals that need to be built for veterans, continue to service the i.t. needs that underlay the foundation of our veterans' systems and also make sure that head start kids don't get turned away from their classrooms, make sure that sikorsky aircraft workers get to go back to work, make sure our food gets inspected, we get meals to our frail elderly. the c.r. is in front of the senate and if the gentleman would agree, i propose that we move forward in this manner with this modification to his request. the presiding officer: will the senator from utah so modify his request? mr. lee: madam president, i object to the proposed modification. madam president? the presiding officer: is there objection to the original request? mrs. boxer: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: i just to say, i so strongly support my colleague from connecticut and i so oppose what's going on here with the republicans. time and time again they have a chance to open up this government and they say no.

we've got the votes in the house. the senate passed it. we sent it over there. let's make sure that we do the right thing for the people. and that means opening up this government. we show up to work. we've got 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. and they are threatening chaos. and i'm so appreciative that the senator from connecticut came towdown here and gave another chance to our republican friends to let them join us and do our job. mr. lee: madam president? the presiding officer: is there objection? the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: thank you, madam president. the senator, having rejected my offer to modify his consent, we have an opportunity to pass a

continuing resolution, a continuing resolution which enjoys the support of the united states senate, which reportedly enjoys the support of a majority of members of the house of representatives should the speaker simply call it, we could solve the problems that the senator is about to talk about as well as all 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 rider as attached to it. and for that -- riders attached to it. and for that reason, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senator from utah. mr. lee: madam president, what we're being told by the majority is that we have to vote for everything in order to fund anything. now, 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 and for other republican

colleagues for expwroing him in that and -- for joining him in that and i look forward to making other similar requests in the coming hours. frankly, i'm a little stunned at some of the things that we're hearing from the other side of the aisle. it's difficult for me to understand the objections to bills the house passed last night and the ones that senate republicans are trying to pass today. first, this legislation doesn't fund anything that's 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 like veterans' disability benefits, the g.i. bill and cancer research. these bills keep our national parks open and they make sure that our national guard personnel get paid. there are many things on which republicans and democrats do not agree, but whether or not to take care of our veterans should not be among those thingsmen am.

serkd the president himself has asked congress to do this. i'll remind my friends exactly what he said just a few days ago, speaking to what might happen during a government shutdown. he said -- quote -- "office buildings would close, paychecks would be delayed, vital services that 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." now, the republicans in the house of representatives took the president of the united states at his word word and stad immediately to draft bills to make sure that these priorities receive funding.

in response, senate democrats have said that this plan to fund things like veterans, national parks and others was fundamentally unserious. they said republicans were playing games. and the biggest head scratcher of them all, the president issued a veto threat for bills that fund the very things that he said he wanted to fund, that he would like congress to fund. and so 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 don't fund everything, they're 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 of appropriations, congress will vote 0 and ultimately -- will vote on and ultimately approval a dozen or so separate segmented appropriations measures, making sure that we address each area within our federal government separately so that there's adequate time to consider what it is that we're spending money o. this is moneyon. this is a big government one that spends between $3.5 and $4 trillion a year. and it's important that we break this up in pieces. but over the last 4 1/2 years or so, we've been operating on the basis of back-to-back continuing resolutions, measures that basically require us to fund everything or fund nothing. and so what this proposal does, what the retches 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 a continuing resolution would do within those

areas and let's build consensus and let's start funding the government in those areas where there isn't significant objection. what i don't hear from my colleagues is a substantive objection to what it does fund. what i hear is what they're objecting to is what it doesn't fund. so let's pass those things that we can agree should be funded and let's move forward. and 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 and i expect that the rest of them will receive bipartisan support as well. in the middle of an unfortunate government shutdown surrounded by all 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 that we can do the same thing 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 a shutdown. oand in a matter of minutes, it was done. so i ask my friends across the aisle: was senator reid playing games? was -- was that unserious? we did that then? just monday, just a few days ago we passed something that didn't 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. so was that unserious? of course not.

so why is it unserious when we try to fund veterans disability payments or cancer research or our national guard? why is it all of a sudden playing games to try 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? and 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's harming the american people and the economy, that it's hurting jobs and threatening the affordability of health insurance. i understand that some of my friends across the aisle want to protect that law. and we're going to continue to have that debate about that law. especially in light of all the problems people are having with

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 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. and my friends across the aisle are welcome to join that debate, as i'm sure they will, but none of these bills, none of the bills that we're considering today relates 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 -- process. if we pursue a step-by-step process for funding our government. this more closely resembles the way we should have been appropriating in the first place. this is the best way forward. it's the way to help minimize the pain americans are experiencing as a result of this unfortunate shutdown. thank you, madam president. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from virginia. mr. kaine: 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, but to reopen government because government of this country should never have shut down in the first place.

few states are feeling the impact of the shutdown more than virginia, and i just want to tell two stories, a personal one and then a story about one community in my state. many federal employees live in virginia. about 150,000 federal employees are jeopardized currently by this shutdown. and 70,000 of them are d.o.d. civilians who were already furloughed earlier this year. one of the employees who is jeopardized is a major in the air force reserves by the name of eric bryan who lives in northern virginia, married and has four children. eric had a distinguished career in the air force and then retired and became a civilian, rejoined the air force reserves 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, and so 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 bryan from major to lieutenant colonel. and i'm going to talk about him and his qualifications, but it's going to be a bitter moment for all of us as i engage in that promotion for this wonderful person who first served the nation flying dozens of missions in iraq and afghanistan and now serves the nation in a new way but has been furloughed twice this year, once in the summer because of the sequester and now because of the shutdown. and we have tens of thousands of eric bryans who are going through just the same experience. second, a community story. if you were to ask where in virginia would you really feel the impact of sequester, madam president, 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. let me talk about one community, chincoteague. the barrier island off the eastern shore of virginia, the subject of the famous story misty of chincoteague, beautiful, beautiful community, tiny small town. chincoteague's economy is fundamentally about the visits to the national seashore, assateague and chincoteague island, but those parks and natural resources have been closed. and so i got a call right away on tuesday morning from friends in chincoteague saying chincoteague is motels, chincoteague is restaurants, chincoteague is grocery stores and gas stations and people that sell suntan lotion and sunglasses, and because of the closure, the entire economy has just had its guts pulled out during the federal shutdown. moreover, there is a listening lighthouse at the wildlife refuge that has been restored. it's taken six years to restore

it, and this weekend was the celebration and the opening of the lighthouse. they expected visitors to come from everywhere. that's been canceled. chincoteague has one other industry that's really important. they didn't want to just be about tourism, so over the last 15 or 20 years, they have really worked to build up the capacity of nasa wallop's island which is five miles from chincoteague island so kids who graduate from chincoteague high school who are interested in science and math don't have to move away from them. they can come back and work as rocket scientists. 80% of the nasa employees at wallop's near chincoteague have been furloughed as a result of this shutdown. and so the experience of my -- my major, now colonel, eric bryan who works in my office and the experience of this community, small community on the eastern shore of virginia demonstrate how serious these effects are. the good news is we can solve

this like that. we can solve it like that if speaker boehner will just allow a vote to reopen government. you know, madam president, i know you know this because we sat through it together, but it just bears a little bit of repetition. the senate passed a budget on march 23 that -- that funds all of these issues at the level that the senate thinks is right. and the same week, the house passed a budget funding government at levels they think is right. and 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. and just for folks who aren't familiar with it -- and there may be some here or listening -- budget conference is a pretty simple thing. when i was governor of virginia, we had them all the time. two houses would pass different budgets. each house takes their budget, you go into a negotiating room, you sit down, you compare. one side wins on this issue, one side wins on the other, on a third issue you might split it 50-50. the house budget and senate budget are very different. but that's what we do.

we sit down and we listen and we dialogue and we compromise and solve the problems of the country. 19 times since march 23 we have stood up on the floor of this body and said we want to go to conference with the house on the budget, and 19 times, the last of which was yesterday, a small handful of senators -- and that was a phrase that the senator from utah used once on the floor in blocking this -- we're a small handful of senators, and the house republicans have blocked a budget compromise. so for six and a half months, we have had the ability to sit down and dialogue, and again for folks who don't know how a budget conference work, 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, and both houses debate the compromise and both houses vote on the compromise. and so everyone's interests are protected. they can look at the compromise and decide whether they like it or they don't, but for sick and a half months, we have been blocked in an effort to go to a budget conference. so imagine, madam president, you

know, our amazement in this body on monday night after the house shut down government, three hours later they passed a bill and said we have an idea. let's have a conference finally after six and a half months, after they shut down government, but let's have it be a real particular kind of conference. not a conference about the budget of the united states, but let's have a conference about whether or not the government of the united states should be open or closed. now, i know i can speak for my colleagues who are here. our view is we'll negotiate and we'll compromise and we'll listen about 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 the house should ever negotiate is whether the united states government exists or not, whether it's funded or not, whether it's open or closed. i believe that it's got to be open. that's essentially what our oaths of office require us to do

when we say we will faithfully discharge all the duties of the office to which we have been elected. and we also won't negotiate whether the united states should pay its bills or not because the 14th amendment to the constitution in section 5 makes very plain that the public debt of the united states, its validity shall not be questioned. so, madam president, there's a way forward here, and it's such a simple way forward, and that is this -- speaker boehner needs to allow a vote in the house. it's simple -- allow a vote. and not only allow a vote, allow a vote on a budget number that he's already agreed to. the continuing resolution, the senator from connecticut talked about it, that is currently pending funds government for an interim period of time at a budget level that was the house's number. it's not a number that i liked. we had a different number in the senate, a higher number that we wanted to fund it at, but we accepted the house's number for the short-term spending bill out of a spirit of compromise, and

we sent it back to the house, and we said we're compromising. and we're not even going 50-50. we're compromising by accepting your budget number. this isn't, as the senator from utah, said we want to fund everything or nothing. no, we have other things we'd like to fund that we're not funding in this bill because we accepted everything that the house wants to fund in their c.r. and so they just need to accept yes for an answer. the good news is that this is not a partisan issue because many senate republicans want to do exactly what i am suggesting, and based on current reports in the house, there are numerous house republicans, four of whom from virginia are publicly on the record. they want to do exactly what we're 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's 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's time to end hostage politics and reopen the doors, and the speaker has it in his hands to do that simply and immediately. thank you, madam president. i yield back the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. tester: thank you, madam president. madam president, the people all around this country and montana are no exception. they are looking at the actions here in washington, d.c., and they are shaking their head in disbelief. they are shaking their head in disbelief because the government is shut down, but yet a bill has passed the senate, and 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. and then all the resolutions -- all the -- yeah, 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. look, a previous speaker this morning said that we shouldn't be dealing with the overall

government. we should be dealing with this in piecemeal fashion. really? really? so 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, and to stand up here on this floor and cherry pick certain pieces of the government to fund and not is totally unfair, and quite frankly, those groups know that they are being used as political pawns in this process. we started out this -- these negotiations with a c.r. that was at 1,058,000,000,000. we compromised that down to a point of $986 billion, somewhere around a $70 billion reduction, real money, significant compromise. the house came back and said no,

that's 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's the most terrible thing, there are all sorts of reasons given on the floor why the affordable care act is. i had a flat tire. it was the affordable care act. i rap out of fuel. that dog gone affordable care act. let's get the affordable care act implemented and all these bogus excuses about why it's so bad will go away. and people will get the advantage of affordable insurance once again. not government health care but affordable insurance so they can afford to get sick. but outside of that, the -- the repeal of it was turned back so then they came back with a delay of one year and then they also said, by the way, if you

work for congress or you're a member of congress, we're going to take away any sort of insurance benefit you get whatsoever which was interesting. because quite frankly if members of congress don't want that insurance, they can turn it back and if they will, after the affordable care act is in place. i doubt that very much. we turned that back and now we're in a situation where we have sent back a clean continuing resolution at $986 billion and the house if the speaker would put that bill on the floor 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, we're not addressing the issues that need to be addressed in this country at will. but when we take a look at whether we're going to fund certain programs, i want to just talk about a few briefly before i kick it over to the senator from colorado. we got intelligent folks on the

ground, fighting in theater right now that need that intelligence, whether they get it or not is up in the air. the folks who protect our clean water and clean air are off the job. clean water, our most important resource, they're not there to make sure that 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're all off the job. domestic violence, and folks who are impacted by domestic violence, their shelters are determining right now whether they turn away those victims of domestic violence. the list goes on and on and on. whether we're talking about the centers for disease control or we're talking about a logging and salvage sales, whether we're talking about allowing wells to be drilled in the back

anne -- be a can, all stopped. and why? why? because of a speaker of the house who, by the way, previous speaker said they were very proud of him. but why has it stopped? 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 and put this country back to work. and 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's a farm bill or defense authorization, the list goes on and on and on. but instead, we deal with a totally self-inflicted crisis, supported by people who want to shut this government down and regardless what they say on this floor are very happy because this government is shut down. it is time, it is time, members of the house of

representatives that you demand the speaker put that bill up so we can get back doing the business of this country. with that, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, madam president. i'd 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 after day in this congress against all odds to actually try to make something work around this place. i want to thank you for your leadership and for your comments. this morning for four years, madam president, i've 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're imagining the future and what we're doing for the next generation of americans, but that we're managing after a little bit of aggravation and hostility to

keep the lights on for one more month, or six more months. well, this time we are not the land of flickering lights. the lights are out in washington. they've managed to shut the government down. no mayor, no school superintendent, no city council in colorado would threaten to shut down of their government for politics. whether they are a democratic mayor or a republican mayor or a tea party mayor, we couldn't stand for it in colorado, and they certainly would never threaten the credit rating of their community for politics. in fact, it's 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 that have been displaced by the flood who have lost everything that they own, the services that they need. this shutdown is already hurting the u.s. economy and

colorado -- and colorado's economy, and it's not surprising why. there's a lot of rhetoric around this place about uncertainty and the damage it does to our economy. nothing could be more -- nothing could create more uncertainty than shutting this government down and threatening the credit rating of the united states by saying we're not going to pay our bills because we've got an ideologies that's so far outside the mainstream of american political thought that we can't find a way to actually win elections that align with the ideology so we're going to use these kinds of tactics to bring this government to its knees. the a.p. 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 one weak shutdown. what good is that doing anybody?

how is that helping any american? economists have estimated that a three-week closing would cut economic production by 1%, would cut our g.d.p. by 1%. how does this self-inflicted wound help anybody? in colorado, to be clear, just as in the other states that you heard from today, it's not just the families that rely on federal programs or federal workers who are suffering because of this shutdown. "the denver post" reported in a neighborhood near the denver federal center, rick corner who owns stack sub sandwich shop in lakewood estimates he's lost 5% of his business since thursday. he says he can't afford to lose any customers because in his words, it's a thin margin business to begin with, he said. how are we helping him? in the same story, deborah giovino, who owns paradise cove

said she's also witnessing a loss, we're not getting our regular lunchers, she says. i think they're 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 gazette, the furloughs at our military bases include more than 1,000 workers at the air force academy, 400 workers at an air force base, 2,200 at peterson arabs. at fort carson, another thousand workers were off the job. it is our job more important than their job? is the job they do to protect this country, to defendant 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 that are

actually in theater right now in afghanistan? i don't think so. after a week of shutdown, the w.i.c. program, women, infant and children's program, will have no funds for clinical services, food benefits and administrative costs. roughly 100,000 women and children in colorado participated in the w.i.c. program last year and will lose their benefits. the shutdown will delay s.b.a. loans for colorado's small businesses. last year s.b.a. processed 1,300 applications for a total of $559 million in loans and they're on the ground right now, thank goodness, working with people that have suffered through these floods. our national parks, our wildlife refuges, major drivers of colorado's economy, are closed. they are shut. 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 who

are already suffering because of this flood. estes park, one of the towns that's been terribly affected, this is one of their peak times of the year for tourism because of the changing leaves. they're losing the opportunity for that and we're making it worse because the government is shut down. shows of federal employees are out of work during this economic recovery, got a delay in social security services. a delay to veterans' benefits by the end of october. colorado is home to almost 400,000 veterans. that's almost 10% of our state's population. at risk for head start agencies, the export-import bank, support for small companies. but the thing is just so insulting at this moment is that we're 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 of public infrastructure has literally been swept away, madam president, 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're working very hard to ensure crucial disaster response and recovery services are not interrupted and to be clear, so far emergency funds are still flowing and emergency workers are still in place and they're doing a phenomenal job. and i want to say on this floor how grateful on behalf of everybody in colorado we are for their work. family is -- 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 8 headquarters in denver are vulnerable to furloughs if this shutdown continues. madam president, our economy is recovering in colorado, and we are being led by innovate businesses that are 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's what innovators do and that's 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 don't 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's what we're here to do. and 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 i mentioned earlier is so far outside the mainstream of american political thought --, they're entitled to their opinion, everybody is entitled to your opinion but you're not entitled to shut the government down if you didn't get what you want. and that's where we find ourselves here. it has been a privilege for me

to work in this place. and the moments that i have enjoyed the most have been the ones where we've 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 can be approved more quickly and so that the 600 bioscience firms in colorado who came to me and said we no longer can raise venture capital because it's going to europe and asia because of uncertainty with the f.d.a., please help us fix that and with republican colleagues we were able to get that done. working on the immigration bill that we passed, and the gang of eight, four democrats and four republicans, solving each others' political problems to bring a product to the floor that actually could pass with nearly 70 votes, a supermajority of the united states senate and we still need to pass that bill in the house. that bill in contrast, stark contrast to the government shutdown that we're going

through right now, actually will drive g.d.p. growth. the congress budget office tells us that immigration bill adds three points of g.d.p. growth in the first ten years and five points in the second ten years and, by the way, at a moment when these people are taking share 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's real money even in washington, d.c. they could be passing that bill over there, but instead the government is shut down. and it has been a catastrophic failure of leadership that's brought us to this place. i have absolutely no doubt -- and from all the press reports i hear, what i hear from my republican colleagues in the senate, my friends in the senate who are republicans, i have no

doubt that if speaker boehner put on the floor of the house the senate version of the so-called continuing resolution, that it would pass with a broad majority of democrats and republicans, and the american people would cheer because that's what they want. they want us working together. and the standard of success needs to be something greater than 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 got to continue to fight to get this government open. we're 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's why we have been sent here, whether we are democrats or republicans. that's why we're here. and they're waiting to see whether we're willing to be the first generation of american leadership to provide less opportunity, not more to the people that are coming after us. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor.

mr. murphy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: i ask unanimous consent the period of debate for morning business only be extended until 5:00 p.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. murphy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. murphy: mr. president, i ask the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: thank you. mr. president, the founding fathers set up a system of government which intentionally made social change in this country really 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, and then they built in fairly frequent elections so that if people didn't like what happened here, then they could change the composition of the legislature to try to get something different to happen. and so i imagine that's 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 meanwhile, we watched as every other industrialized nation in the world decided that the compassionate thing to do was to make sure that 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. so what happened a couple years ago when after 100 years of debate and consternation and gridlock, we finally made a decision as a mitigation 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 was 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 that the outcomes we were getting just weren't good enough for the amount of money that we were paying. so 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.

and 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, and i would note every single senator here who voted for it and stood for election got returned to the united states 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 down here to the floor of the senate and going down to the floor of the house, saying that we have got to shut down the government because the people don't want this health care law to be implemented. and that's why they're doing this right now, because they know that 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 that this is their last chance to get this thing 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 thing is implemented will be proven untrue.

so republicans come down here and say the american republic wants this thing delayed. first let me make the point that my colleagues have been making all day that this is not the place to have that conversation. the people of this country do not support the government being shut down over republicans' objections to the health care bill. i mean, there is just no way that this place can work if every single person adopts a my way or the highway approach. a condition of running the government for just six weeks, which is essentially what we're 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 you know what? i come from newtown, connecticut. i don't understand why we can't agree that before you buy a weapon, everybody should just get a simple criminal background check. that's as important as anything in the world is to me, coming

from where i come from, but i am not conditioning my support for the operation of the federal government upon republicans agreeing to support me on background checks. i bet you 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's not how i'm going to operate nor how any other democrat is operating. when i listen to people say you know what, 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're not attaching any conditions. no conditions, zero conditions to the government coming back and operating. the only party that is attaching conditions to the operation of the federal government are republicans. this isn't a negotiation. we just want the government to be back open for business with no extras.

but you know what, i'm okay to have a debate on what the people think about the health care law. i don't think it should be while 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 our air. but let's have that debate. because while polls are going to tell you people are still kind of divided whether they like the particulars of the law that we passed to reform our health care system, they don't want it repealed. in fact, one of the most recent polls that i looked at which has been consistent with most everything i've seen said that only 33% of americans, one out of three, want the law repealed or delayed or defunded.

by a 2-1 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 attempts to shut down the government unless the health care bill is repealed. those numbers are even bigger. it's not 2-1, it's more than like 3-1 or 4-1. the most recent university poll said that the american public opposes republicans' efforts to shut down the government over the defunding of the health care law by a 72-22 margin. and, of course, the next hostage 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 another whole set of conditions agreed to and geas guest what, the american public doesn't want that either, by a slightly smaller

margin of 74% to 27%, the american public says pay your bills, don't put balil political riders on paying your bills. when americans go fill up the gas tank, they put their credit card in and pay the bill. they don't fill up 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 that we incur. and third, beyond the the polling on the specific delay, beyond the polling on the shutdown tactics republicans are using, if you want to know what people think of this health care law, then just look what happened over the last 48 hours after these exchanges opened up. volume at healthcare.gov continues to be astrom only cal, even today, the third day

of implementation. 6.1 million unique visits in the first 24 hours, 190,000 calls into the h.h.s. call center, 104,000 web chats were requested. i think the estimate is 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, and on the first day, 6.1 million people went to go check out whether they're going to get a better product. it's going to take a little while for all those people to sign up, but if six million people are just showing up on the web site on day one, 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, are desperate for cheaper insurance. and they're going to get it. i saw somebody who was quoted in a 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 people today are paying 20%, 30%, 40% more than they may have to pay on the exchange, that's just -- helps them and hept helps our economy because that money goes right back out into main street. 6.1 million people went on the site in the first 24 hours because all of these sick people, 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 can't tell you no just because you're sick.

i hate to tell my friends on the other side of the aisle, but there are just an enormous amount of really sick people out there who have been getting sicker because they can't afford to go to a doctor. why there's six million people showing up on the web site on day one, because a lot of people in dire straits who want insurance. look, the reason that 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's what this is to people out there. they get access to health care, well, then, they have a chance

at a quality of life. if they don't, they're going to get sick and a lot of people aren't going to make it. mr. president, 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 really want the health care law implemented or not. 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 three 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. mr. president, i yield the floor. and, mr. president, i have three unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders and i ask unanimous consent these requests be agreed to and these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. murphy: with that, i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. harkin: i ask further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. harkin: parliamentary inquiry, mr. president, are we under a ten-minute time limit? is that right? the presiding officer: yes, that is correct. mr. harkin: i thank the chair. first of all, mr. president, in

my capacity as the chair of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the department of health and human services, the department of education, the department of labor, also the national institutes of health and the centers for disease control and prevention i have been very blessed to have a great staff. these are hardworking people, they work countless hours putting appropriations bills together, making sure we meet our obligations to the american people. i'm sorry to say that -- that the chief clerk of my committee, mr. eric fatimi is leaving after 12 years of just outstanding service to the senate and to the appropriations committee and as a clerk of this very important appropriations subcommittee. and, mr. president, i know that we're under some limits here in

regards to our time. when the government begins to reopen, when it reopens again and we have a better opportunities on the floor, i intend to take the time of the senate to give my entire speech about eric fatimi and what a wonderful staff person he's been. tomorrow will be his last day here on the hill and on the appropriations committee, and i am so sorry to see him go, but he has been a -- just such an outstanding, outstanding member of our staff. respected on both sides of the aisle, i can say that. but i know we have time constraints so i would ask unanimous consent to put my entire statement and tribute to eric fafimi in the record as a

stand-alone statement separate and apart from the statement i'm about to make in terms of the government shutdown. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. harkin: mr. president, more and more interesting figures are coming in to my health committee from around the country with regards to what's happening around the nation in terms of the health care marketplace, obamacare. you know, that the republicans said was going it be a failure and all that kind of stuff. and how it was going 0 cost so much more -- it was going to cost so much more money. now, i don't have it for every state. it is starting to come in. but i have it for some states. and i want to just give this body and the 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 -- 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 noi no now know, the marketpe premium, for a family of four making $50,000 a year with the tax credits, that i remember thy premium will be a savings of $148.55 for a family of four making $50,000 a year. in my state of iowa, that median premium per month for a family of four this year was $549.58. the marketplace premium for the family of four at $50,000 with tax credits is now $103 a month. for savings of $446.58 a 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. from $684 a month to $63 a month. savings of $621 a month. in the state of oklahoma. we have texas. their premiums and their family of four median premium per month this year, $504.50. their marketplace premium, family of four, $50,000 a year, after the tax credits, $57 a month. for a savings of $44 7.50 a month. amazing.

amazing savings. and many of these people are getting insurance for the first time. many of these are people that may have had preexisting conditions or they worked in jobs that did not give them health care coverage, and they simply couldn't afford $500 a month in texas. but now they can afford $5 -- $57 a month and they can get coverage for their family of four and 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're willing to shut down the government? i had to go out and talk to some of these -- they ought to go out and talk to some of these families in iowa, oklahoma, texas, michigan. in michigan,2013 premium -- $381

a month this year. in the marketplace, $80 a month. georgia, $448 a month. this year down to $132 a month under the marketplace. that's what the republicans want to stop? well, i think we're seeing that what the republicans really want to do is keep that same, old system we had where health insurance companies called the tiewrntion you paid the price. and if you couldn't aforward it, tough look, go to the emergency room. well now we're going to cover all americans. and 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 two days, over 7 million americans -- 7

million -- have visited healthcare.gov to to get more information on what they can do to sign up. again, the marketplace call centers -- this is calls, not the web site, people calling -- received over 295,000 calls since midnight on october 1. the wait time has been cut in half because of this -- because of getting people in there. now the wait time is only two minutes now. two minutes if you call into the call center. lastly, mr. president, again, i want to repeat what i said yesterday. i know the majority leader said it this morning. about the dangers of continuing this government shutdown. i quoted -- i quoted a congresswoman from iowa, quoted

in "politico," saying "we passd the bewitching hour last night and the sky didn't fold and the roof didn't cave in," according to this congressman from iowa. is that what we have to do? does the sky have to fall and the roof have to cave in before we do something? i kept -- i pointed out i.e.d. and i'll point out again today, the center for disease control and prevention is closed down, closed down. why is that important? well, we're now in the flu season. more than 200,000 americans hospitalized from flu each year. in a mild year, 3,000 people will die in a severe year, that can rise to 50,000. that's ye why c.d.c. monitors wh strains are circulating around the country, which communities are being hit the hardest, how they can contain it, keep it from spreading. they aren't doing that now. they're shut down.

they're shut down. food safety -- 12 days ago 162 people in ten states became ill with hepatitis-a because of eating frozen berries. right away the c.d.c. tracked it down, isolated it, recalled it, found out that it was pomegranate berries from turkey. well, 162 people got hepatitis-a, but not any more. i can tell you, the c.d.c. is not out there doing this now because they are a 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 will have to get sick? is that what this congressman from iowa is saying, that we got to get more sick people? is that what the roof caves in,

is that twha means, or the sky is falling? in august, cyclostor cyclosporad people who ate a salad mix. immediately called the center for disease control. they got on it. it went through a lot of other states. 25 states is where this salad mix was sent. they recalled it all. they traced it to some salad that had come from mexico. and they stopped it. that was last month -- well, that was august. that was august. how many people have to get sick? will we have to have a west nile virus, help tigh hepatitis before we can start the government up again? this is just totally irresponsible.

to say, well, we can shut down the government because the sky hasn't fallen and the roof hasn't carved in. not for members of congress. they're getting their paycheck. they're coming to work every day. we're here. we're getting our pay. how about all those government workers that work on our staffs, that work on our committees, that run the senate, good, heart-working public servants? they're out of work. they're not getting a paycheck. i've had staff people who don't make a lot of money. they have families, they have a mortgage to meet, maybe a car payment to make, don't have any money coming in. they wanted to go to the credit union here to get a bridge loan to take them through the crisis. guess what? the credit union is shut down. now where do they go? their credit card? get the money from their credit card? so i say to my congressman from

iowa that, for these people, the roof has caved in, the sky has fallen. the thousands of head start kids that will be sent home from head start this month and their parents will have to find something. what other care do they have? they're working, what will they do? for them, the sky is falling, the roof has caved in. don't we care about them? so, again, social security -- i mentioned that, too. yeah, social security, they'll still take your claims and they'll take your application for a social security card, but that's it. you won't get it because the backlog is backing up. they'll ache it, but they won't -- they'll take it, but they

won't give it because the backlog is backing up. people won't get an answer now when they call the social security office. they're closed. they've lost their medicare card or their social security card or they need a new card. 22,000 americans every day file for retirement benefits. 12,000 apply for disability benefits. you can still apply, but you're not going to get any help. for them, the sky has fallen, the roof has caved in. so, i don't know ... what is this congressman saying? the sky has got to fall on him and the roof has got to cave in on him? before he'll do something to help open up the government? and to hear them talk about it, representatives saying this is

about the -- a representative saying this is about the happiest she's been. this is a congresswoman from minnesota. this is about the happiest she's been. "about the happiest i've seen members in a long time," she said. another one said here that -- yes, "we're very excited," representative michele bachmann said, "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 congressman coleman of texas. "we're 10000% united." so, you see, this is where we are. this tea party group in the house, they're happy to shut down the government. the happiest they've been, they

said. they want it discord and disunity, chaos, confusion. well, the american people don't want that. and the american people don't want to turn their backs on obamacare hereto. -- on obamacare either. because now they see that they're able to get coverage. even if they have a preexisting condition, they can get a good rate for them and their families, which they couldn't get before. now it's time to open up 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 up the government. and he says we wouldn't negotiate. we've already negotiated. because before that we had one level of spending in the bill, they had a lower spending, we agreed with them. we took the lower level. we took the republicans' level.

so all he has to do is bring that on the house floor and it will pass in the next ten minutes, 15 minutes, half-hour. it'll pass. and then we can open up the government, people can come back to work, the center for disease control can get their people back out in the field, the national institutes of health will open wa once again, head starts kids will stay in their program, the women, infants, and children will be able to get the food for the kids their homeless. so, mr. boehner, all you have to do is bring that bill on the floor. you don't even have to vote for it. congressman boehner doesn't have to vote for it. just throw it out and i'll bet you enough moderate republicans and democrats will vote for it to pass it. i challenge you. bring it out. let's see what happens. that's the way to end this debacle right now. with that, i yield the floor.

i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: quorum call:

mr. harkin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: i ask further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. proeupb without objection. mr. harkin: -- the presiding officer: without objection. mr. harkin: i have been informed that i spoke incorrectly when i said the credit union is closed. i guess one office is closed one

place and another is open and they will take calls. i guess the hart building is close and i guess another office someplace else is closed. so i spoke incorrectly. but i will continue to make this point. isn't it a shake 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 make a mortgage payment or car payment or whatever it is. we don't have to do that. we continue to get paid while we're here. again, in response to the tpabt that while the sky -- fact that while the sky hasn't fallen and the roof hasn't caved in, according to this congressman from iowa, someone like that, who now has to borrow money from the credit aoupb is -- credit union is not right. this is just simply not right. another reason why we've got to call off this government

shutdown, which i said we can do in the next few minutes if mr. boehner would just put the continuing resolution he has over there on the floor and let his people vote on it. mr. president, with that, again i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: mr. president, there is more talk than ever about our inability to find common ground on central economic and fiscal issues of our time. the government shutdown is throwing a major wrench into a if a jill economic recovery. nearly a 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 n.i.h.. 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've heard a small minority in this country rail against government. when i hear the latest tie raids from some of the -- tirades from some of the extremists in the house, from their rhetoric you'd think they believe that any time we the people come together to improve our lives that the nation is committing some terrible wrong. from their rhetoric, you'd think they believed 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's 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 f.d.a. to ignore whether morning sickness drugs will cause horrible deformties

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 us to protect funding for our national defense and keep the air traffic controllers on the job. and 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's not real. it doesn't exist. what is real, what does exist is all those specific, important

things that we as americans have chosen to do together through our government. in our democracy, government is not some make-believe thing that an independent has an independent will of its own. in our democracy, government is just how we describe the things that we, the people, have already decided to do together. it's not complicated. our government has three basic functions: provide for the national defense, put in place rules of the road like speed limits and bank regulations that are fair and transparent, and build the things together that none of us can build alone. roads, power grids, schools; the things that give 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 your purse on main street or your 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 that the white pills that we take are antibiotics and not baking soda.

the national highway traffic safety administration oversees crash tests to make sure that all new cars have effective brakes. the consumer product safety commission makes sure that babies' car seats don't collapse in a crash and that 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 at 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

that government can work and believe government should work. today -- that's 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's trillion with a "t." that's $120,000 for every american household, more than two years' worth of income for the average family. billions of dollars in retirement savings disappeared. millions of workers lost their jobs and millions more families lost their homes. in april 2011, after a two-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 you 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 that no institution is intall liberal. people -- infallible. people make mistakes and sometimes we get things wrong. but our response isn't to give up. our response isn't to sit back and say, "i told you so." we're 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's always evolving. we're constantly redesigning and reimagining and improving on what we do together. but time and time again throughout our history we have reaffirmed the simple truth that government matters. and right now, right at this moment, if you look closely, you'll see that we are reaffirming it once again. it's 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