Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Garamendi's leadership on this issue.

I don't think there is--I have not been able to find--another democratic nation in our world that shuts down its government over policy arguments, wasting $1.2 billion of GDP a week for no purpose.

Madam Speaker, I want to share a few stories of the impact of this senseless shutdown on workers, on people in my home State.

When we went home on Friday, I organized a meeting at our airport, Detroit Metropolitan Airport, with a range of Federal workers who have been affected. We just wanted to listen to them and hear their stories.

We invited Fred Upton and my Democratic colleagues from Michigan, and those who traveled home were able to make it.

I just want to share a few of those stories.

There is Dave, a biologist at the NOAA research lab in Ann Arbor. He has been furloughed, not getting paid. They study the water currents in the Straits of Mackinac.

Line 5, our locally famous pipeline that literally just goes in the water in the bottom of the Great Lakes underneath the Mackinac Bridge, if that breaks or has a rupture, the research of this group is what determines how we would fight that oil spill, which would devastate the economy of the Great Lakes.

That supercomputer is shut off. It is just not working. And if we have that, if there was an accident there, the whole Midwest would be out of luck.

They run an experimental weather computer that supplements the basic work of the National Weather Service and contributes to our weather forecasting. God forbid we have a huge storm somewhere in the United States where we get it wrong because they are not doing their work; they are not able to work. Just imagine some huge pileup of cars on one of our interstates that happens because we are not doing our best weather forecasting.

We heard from Mark, who is the president of his local. He works at the EPA lab in Ann Arbor. That lab is shut down.

They are the ones who determine the fuel efficiency of the cars you buy. Our auto companies right now are not able to move their cars forward toward the market because they cannot begin to sell a car until it has the EPA rating.

That EPA lab also does enforcement of fossil fuel companies in our region. That is not happening.

We heard from Wanavira, a TSA agent for the last 2\1/2\ years. She is a veteran. So many of these people were veterans. She is a veteran. She was a Detroit cop for 10 years, and now she is a TSA agent.

She had to go to the food bank to make sure she had food for her family because she is not getting paid. She is being forced to work without pay.

We heard from Jennifer, another TSA agent. She and her husband--I forget which was which--one of them is 11 years and one of them is 16 years working for TSA. Friday was a pay-less payday for the whole family, no income coming in at all.

Her comment was: We have got this week figured out. But next week-- meaning, the week we are in right now--they don't know how they are going to put food on the table.

We heard from Youssef, who works for the Customs service. He said his friends think he is on vacation because he has been furloughed by our government. But his comment was that he didn't think a vacation included calling your mortgage lender and your car loan creditor to beg for a month of forbearance. He never thought that he would get rich as a public servant, but he also didn't think he would have trouble buying formula for his 5-month-old daughter.

We heard from Angel, a computer programmer for the IRS. She has twin girls in college. They just started a new semester. She has no money to buy their books. She has no money to buy their other supplies. She is another veteran.

She herself has student loans. She tried to go on edu.gov to figure out if she could get a month off. Website closed.

So we need to work hard to break through to the Secretary of Education to work with her to give forgiveness for student loans for Federal employees who are affected by this.

And, finally, I have got to share the story of Tim. It is a frightening one because he inspects our planes, and half of them are working and half of them are furloughed, and they are not inspecting our planes to the extent that they normally do.

This is no joke. I do not want this shutdown to end because our friends finally come to their senses after some horrible thing happens to a plane, our cars, or our food supply or something that isn't being inspected.

But Tim is a Navy vet who went to work for General Motors. He lost his job in the Great Recession.

Madam Speaker, in a previous life, I created and ran something called No Worker Left Behind. I ran the workforce system of the State of Michigan, and I created, essentially, the largest experiment by any State in actually putting workers back to school who were unemployed or underemployed.

We put 162,000 Michiganders back to school. This gentleman, Tim, was one of them. He studied IT. And out of that program in Oakland County, Michigan, he got a job with the FAA. And here he is, working without a paycheck now. And so many of his coworkers are furloughed.

He just wants to serve his country. He has two kids in college, again, and they need funding for tuition, books, and so forth.

Madam Speaker, there is no reason that 820,000 Federal workers are forced to work for no pay or are simply off without their livelihood. And so many more government contractors are being victimized, and so many small businesspeople who run a restaurant or a barbershop near a government facility are robbed of their income.

The economic effects are devastating. There is no reason for it.

I appreciate Mr. Garamendi's leadership on this. I just wanted to come down and join him in calling on our colleagues in the Senate to join with us in voting to reopen our government right now. After all, we passed what they had passed, what our Republican friends had passed. It is not our appropriations, how we would want them, as Democrats. We passed their appropriations.

And in a bipartisan spirit, let's reopen our government, and we can have all the negotiations we want over policy matters.

Madam Speaker, on Friday, several of my Democratic colleagues and I met with hardworking Americans who are living with the consequences of the ongoing Trump shutdown.

We met an FAA employee, working without a paycheck, who has two kids in college, and they need money for books as the new semester begins.

We met a Customs and Border Patrol employee who said his friends think he is on vacation, but a vacation does not include calling your mortgage lender and your auto loan company to tell them you may not make a payment. He said he never expected to get rich as a public servant, but he thought he would be able to buy formula for his 5- month-old daughter.

We met a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee who told us weather forecasts for the Great Lakes will be impacted for months, which will, in turn, impact shipping.

We are on day 24 of the longest government shutdown in American history. Estimates say we are letting GD growth take a hit of $1.2 billion every week.

The President has to stop holding the health, safety, and paychecks of the American people hostage and reopen the government immediately, because 5,200 Federal workers in Michigan are working without pay or are furloughed. I guarantee you that every one of them has a story like the ones I shared.

Madam Speaker, I rise as a proud cosponsor of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, a bill to implement universal background checks as a critical first step towards ending the public health crisis of gun violence.

Today, I speak up in honor of the Moms and Students Demand Action leaders from Michigan's Ninth District who have inspired me. I speak up because it is unacceptable that far more people per capita are shot and killed annually in our country than in other wealthy nations. And it is unacceptable that in 2016, more than 1,200 Michiganders died from firearms-related injuries.

I speak up because the American people are counting on us to save lives, and this bill is a commonsense way to do that. I feel privileged to cosponsor this bill as one of my first actions in Congress. We owe it to families everywhere to get this done.

Mr. Speaker, last night, the President went on television in an attempt to justify his decision to shut down our government and plunge our country into chaos. He claims that we are in the middle of an emergency, and I actually agree with him on that. I just don't agree on what the emergency is.

It is an emergency that more than 5,200 Federal workers in Michigan are working without pay, or are furloughed.

It is an emergency that the Environmental Protection Agency has halted inspections of our drinking water systems.

And it is an emergency that our President is ready to spend, in his words, ``years'' prolonging this shutdown and hurting American families for the sake of an ineffective and expensive border wall.

On day 1, House Democrats took the first steps to clean up this mess by passing a complete funding package to reopen our government. Now we are preparing further action to reopen all government agencies, one by one, and remove any doubt that hardworking Americans will receive their tax refunds and the services they depend on.

Enough is enough. Michiganders can't afford one more day of the Trump shutdown.