mr. merkley: thank you. madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: might i ask a couple of other pieces of the puzzle? why not with that concern, i would pass this question through the chair to my colleague, why not with that concern simply ask the house delegates to carry that concern rather than blocking the start of the conference committee? mr. sessions: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: my colleague through the chair, well, it's very simple. senators have rights, and they have a right to assert those privileges on the floor of the senate. and we have senators that say you shouldn't do this on -- you shouldn't raise the debt ceiling on the budget, budget bill. and we don't want to go to conference unless you do, agree not to sneak that through without a full debate and vote on the floor of the senate. and attaching it to a bill is a budget deal that's huge and would have a lot of interest in it. it would make it even more difficult to separate that question out. so rightly or wrongly, that's t

mr. merkley: mr. president, i'm pleased to be here with my colleagues from montana and alaska to talk about some of the impacts in our various states and i thought i'd share six or seven different aspects of the impact of the government shutdown and the potential of a default and then turn this over to my colleague from montana and then i think we're going to endpaij in a little bit of back and forth. before i list specific examples of the challenges that are faced, i thought i would give just a framework, an analogy, if you will, of how we can think about thsm the legislative process is very much like a baseball game. various folks come together. there are some that are for a bill, some are against a bill. they have a legislative competition and ultimately one side wins. and normally the side that loses, if they believe they're still right, they say, we'll be back again, later in the serks we'll be back next year, just like a baseball team will say we'll be back later in the season to compete again o

mr. merkley: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. i rise to continue a series of comments that my colleagues have been making about the situation we find ourselves in at this moment with our government shut down and with the possibility of a default on the payments of our federal government. this situation is virtually unprecedented. to be in a situation of near default. now, i want to step back from the immediate arguments over what the answer looks like. just understand that we have wandered far, far outside the normal orderly lines of legislative debate. legislative debate is like a baseball game. folks come together, some oppose plan a and one team wins and one team loses. on this case, we can go back to the health care debate. some folks want a health care plan that would put millions of folks without insurance into insurance and have a number of systematic reforms that would help americans to end abuses in the insurance industry. they wanted to create competition between companies so that customers -- that is, citize

mr. merkley, aye. mr. manchin, aye.s voting in the negative, alexander, ayatt, fisher, flake, graham, grassley, ho hoeve hoeven, inhofe, johnson of wisconsin, lee, mcconnell, maran, murkowski, paul, roberts, rubio, scott, toomey, wicker. mr. hatch, mr. hatch, no. mr. keyesia, mr. keyesia, no. mr. barroso, mr. barroso, no. mr. shelby, mr. shelby, no. mr. sessions, mr. sessions, no. mrs. shaheen, mrs. shaheen, aye. mr. blunt, mr. blunt, no. >> all right, we're going to step away from the drama in the senate chamber. and continue our conversations with chuck conesburg, he was an assistant director of the white house office of management during the '95 shutdown. in listening to all what is going on this morning, does it feel the same in '95? does it feel worse? how do you characterize this? >> well, 1995 was pretty bad. it was the longest shutdown in u.s. history, lasted for three weeks. this one, this one feels that it could be as bad, because of the level of gridlock that is currently in place right now. >> roger simon fr

mr. merkley: the words fiscal responsibility have echoed in this chamber time after time and they have been put forward in defense a series of stra strates this year that can only be described as incredibly irresponsible. let's turn the clock back six months when we try to convene addition tried to convene a budget conference committee with the house and it was blocked. the budget conference committee was budget was not blocked with the argument fiscal responsibility. and yet there was a blockade of putting together a budget so we could have a smart plan to go forward and a foundation for the appropriation bills. and then colleagues across the aisle blocked the appropriations process. they argued it was fiscally responsibly to do. so but that meant keeping programs that were not working and continuing them rather than replacing them with better plans. so that, too, was irresponsible. and then we had folks, well, it will be fiscally irresponsible if we shut down the government. but this is costing america. this is decreasing revenue. this is increasing expenses. and it is creation th increas

mr. merkley: i offer to yield back all remaining time. the presiding officer: without objection. hearing no further debate, the question is on the wood nomination. all those in favor say aye. all those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the question is on the haikala nomination. the yeas and nays. the yeas and nays are called for. is there a sufficient second for the yeas and nays? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: vote: vote: vote:

mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: madam president, do i need to request a specific amount of time in which to speak? are we under any rules? the presiding officer: senators are permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes. mr. merkley: thank you very much. i appreciate opportunity to express my feelings tonight. quite frankly, i was one of the optimists in this body. many of my colleagues have been saying that the determination, the determination to run our economy over a cliff is so powerful, we're going to end up with a government shutdown. and i kept saying, i don't think so. i don't think so. i think that here in this senate and across in the house there are reasonable folks who know that this type of brinksmanship is doing intense damage to our nation. and i don't believe that we'll end up there. so here is my faith in the common sense of the collection of 435 members of the house and a hundred members of the senate, my faith in their reasonablene reasonableness, and apparently that faith has been misplaced. b