Floor Statements

Mr. President, I think one of the things we ought to be observing, here at least, is courteous rules among ourselves. This is meant to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. If we follow the rules, follow the regular order, follow the committee process, and follow the ways through the committee processes for resolving disagreements and disputes, I think we can get through this.

I believe on both sides of the aisle there are pragmatic people devoted to this country who want to solve the two major problems we have facing us right this minute; that is, to reopen government, because we are now in the 10th day of a shutdown; and, No. 2, to meet the debt obligations of the United States of America as mandated in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

I call upon my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the dome: Let's reopen government. Let's pay our bills. And let's get through the regular committee processes to solve our problems.

There are those on the other side of the dome in the House of Representatives that are proposing a new supercommittee. We have been there, and we have done that. After the 2011 crisis, when we faced our debt limit, there was a process put in place called a supercommittee. It went nowhere. This new idea will go nowhere as well. It is a new process that will only result in more delay.

I think we have two supercommittees. I call them supercommittees because they are great committees. They are wonderful committees. That is the Budget Committee chaired by Senator Patty Murray and her ranking member Senator Jeff sessions, himself a distinguished judge from Alabama, so he knows about conflict resolution. There is the Appropriations Committee that deals with discretionary spending, chaired by me and my vice chairman Senator Richard Shelby, again a seasoned fiscal conservative who knows how to concentrate on the bottom line so we can be a more frugal government but also be an effective government. Let that committee do its job.

There is also the Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus. I know the ranking member Senator Grassley from Iowa is on the floor. He has an incredible history of being a compassionate conservative and he knows the Tax Code and knows the values of Iowa--which is, let's put country above party.

Instead of inventing new committees and new processes, free us up to do our job. Free us up to be able to do what the committee process is meant to be able to do.

For me and the Appropriations Committee, we moved all of our appropriations bills. We are ready to come to the floor. We are ready to go to conference if called up, if we have a method for being able to move. We are ready to do it.

Senator Murray on the Budget Committee is ready to go to conference with the House. But 21 times she was blocked by 6 naysayers primarily representing a tea party, small faction within the Republican Party.

The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, has traditionally understood that you maintain the values of the country, that you are fiscally conservative, but you follow the rules that were established. The rules of the Budget Committee passed by the Senate in the Budget Control Act say they

were supposed to have their job done on April 15. Well, we moved the budget on March 23, over 200 days ago, and over 20 requests to go to conference with me, with Congressman Paul Ryan, and with his House counterparts to work out what our discretionary spending should be. What should our revenues be? What should we evaluate in terms of our mandatory spending where we can take a look at it but not shrink those earned benefits like Social Security and VA benefits that people count on and work their whole life for and even put their life on the line? We have to be able to do our job.

I will tell you what has been the latest situation that has so shocked me. We are on the verge of being a deadbeat nation. We are on the verge of being a global deadbeat nation. What is a deadbeat? A deadbeat is someone who does not meet their financial obligations.

Over the last 3 days, we have heard about how the families of the men and women who died in the line of duty serving their country and are entitled to a death benefit were not going to get it because of the government shutdown.

The Fisher family--well known for serving military families, well known and so deeply cherished--offered to step forward to pay that. The philanthropy of the United States, instead of the public responsibility of the United States.

I want to thank the Fisher family for stepping forward. But, my gosh, what humiliation. We are the United States of America, with the strongest and best military in the world, and to honor its obligation to its own, the United States has to borrow money for a death benefit. That is deadbeat. I think it is humiliating. I think it is despicable. It shows just how low we have sunk.

We can get it back. It is in our power because this isn't being inflicted on us. This is what is being inflicted on us by other Americans sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. When they took that obligation, they didn't take that obligation to just uphold the Amendments they like--like the second one--but they took that obligation to uphold all of the Amendments.

Let's start with the 14th, which says that the debt of the United States of America should not be called into question. That is clearly in the Constitution. No matter what, America will pay its bills. The reliability of the United States of America to meet its debt obligations is the financial glue that helps to hold the global economy together.

I am not going to go into doomsday or Armageddon or whatever. But if you actually read what the ambassadors of China and Japan--one a great ally and the other a formidable competitor--say: We are holding your debt. Pay your bills, or a fiscal crisis will begin to unravel in your country and around the world.

We cannot be a deadbeat nation. If we are a superpower, we must first of all show our power by meeting our financial obligations. How we get our public house in order by reducing our public debt is the subject again of the Appropriations Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Finance Committee. We have the capability to do it. I am really calling upon my friends on the other side of the aisle--and there are many. And it is not that we are pals. It is because we have come together out of mutual respect to solve mutual problems, being of help to each other mutually, that we have been able to keep the government functioning and doing it in a way that is smart and affordable.

So I say, please, let's reopen government. I am calling upon the House to pass the Senate continuing fiscal funding resolution that would reopen government on November 15 and that process to lay the groundwork for resolving our appropriations bills and canceling sequester.

I call upon those six that are blocking us--meaning the Senate--from going to the Budget Committee to do this. Those are two simple acts within our power to do. I hope that we can do it.

I intended today to speak about how the shutdown is affecting Maryland. We are really being hard hit. Maryland and Virginia have the largest concentration of Federal agencies, both civilian and military, in America. And, gee, we are proud of that. We are so proud of the fact that we have the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which works with our private sector that enables us to sell products around the world.

We are so proud of the fact that we have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to make sure that we are looking out for large and small, whether it is to make sure that our mattresses are not flammable or that our cribs and swimming pools are safe for our children. I am proud of those agencies.

I am sorry that my Federal employees are not working. It is having a terrible impact on the Maryland economy. Both our comptroller and our Governor are talking about the significant amount of lost revenue that we are having because people aren't working and they aren't buying. If you talk to small businesses where these agencies are located, it is just terrible.

I just want to tell one story. The Social Security Administration is headquartered in Maryland in a community called Woodlawn, a wonderful community with a vibrant, civic engagement. It is just great. Across the street from the Social Security Administration is a small business called the Salsa Grill. It is usually crowded with lunch hour people, early morning coffee, those little baby showers that we women like to have or a birthday party the guys are throwing for one of their pals at lunchtime. The Salsa Grill last Friday, instead of 30 customers, had 3. The owner was quoted as saying if the shutdown goes on much longer, he won't be able to hang on any longer. This is what makes our economy great.

I talked to one of the largest automobile dealers in Maryland. The showrooms were empty in the Baltimore-Washington corridor last weekend, even though they had wonderful cars, new cars. They were ready to do deals for the old 2013 models they wanted to move out--empty; empty. This ripples through our economy. This is not just, ``Oh, we are going to contain government.'' We are hurting ourselves.

The fight about ObamaCare is over. Let's say goodbye to that fight. Let's get on to the fiscal issues of the United States of America. I say here, as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, I am ready to negotiate. I am ready to meet, to compromise, to see how we can have our domestic and defense discretionary spending done in a way that begins to reduce our public debt but will also have a progrowth way of public investments, making sure our country is safe, that we are building roads, building the superinformation highway, educating our young people, and doing research and development.

I know my time is up, but I believe very strongly that we have to solve our problems. I am ready to say to the other side of the aisle that I am ready to work together. That is because I have done it in the past. We actually like doing it, for us pragmatists to get into a room, solve problems, give and take, and actually learn from each other. I could give many examples of that.

Right now we need to set the example for the world that we are the greatest deliberative body. We have to get back to deliberating instead of delaying.

Please, for the House, pass the continuing funding resolution. For the Senate, limit your objection to the Budget Committee going into conference. Let's reopen the government, let's pay our bills, and sit down and negotiate in a way worthy of a great country, and let's honor the Constitution of the United States.

Madam President, I rise to speak as the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who would like to reopen government and have our committee get back to regular order to be able to move our appropriations bills, to be able to debate them on the floor, amend them on the floor, and go to conference to resolve either fiscal or other issues we might have with the House. But we can't do it because we are in lockdown politics.

There is much about where we find ourselves that is very frustrating to me. One of the main ones is the fact that the tea party Republicans are out there saying things that simply are not accurate. Tea party Republicans say President Obama won't negotiate. That is not true. Tea party Republicans are saying Democrats in the Senate won't negotiate. That is not true. Tea party Republicans say the Senate has not moved appropriations bills. That is not true. The Appropriation Committee has. Tea party Republicans say the House doesn't have the votes to reopen the government. That is not true. And tea party Republicans say the debt limit is not a big deal. That is not true. So let me elaborate on these point by point.

Tea party Republicans say President Obama won't negotiate. The President has negotiated time and time again. He had a framework for a grand bargain in his 2014 budget. Read it. Let the print speak for itself. He had $1.8 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years, including $400 billion in health care savings, $200 billion in savings from mandatory programs, $200 billion in further discretionary cuts in strategic funding and discretionary spending. And, yes, he would even change the cost-of-living calculation for Social Security. But the Republicans couldn't take yes for an answer. Here was Obama, here was his budget, here is what he was offering--to reduce debt, to take on mandatory spending, to take on discretionary spending. They couldn't take yes for an answer. It included items in there I didn't agree with, but they were to be negotiated, to be discussed. Since he became President, the deficit has gone down by 50 percent, from $1.4 trillion in 2009 to an estimated $700 billion in 2013. High? Yes. But cut in half.

Now let's go to this President who they say won't negotiate. He negotiated in December of 2012 on a fiscal cliff deal. He wanted a 2- year delay in sequester, but we got 2 months. He wanted tax cuts for the wealthy to be eliminated above $250,000. He agreed to an estate tax exemption. He wanted a $3.5 million exemption, the Republicans wanted $5 million. He said OK. The 2-percent Social Security payroll tax was ending without offsetting stimulus provisions. He gave and we supported him. Now they say he won't negotiate.

Speaker Boehner says, we just want to have a conversation. That is what the President did. What were those summits at Andrews Air Force Base? I thought that was going to be kumbaya. The President has had private one-on-one meetings, and nothing has come from that. Then he did a larger charm offensive--he had dinner with Republicans both at the White House and at different restaurants around town. Nobody seems to be able to take yes for an answer. This is the President who has invited people to the White House, invited leadership to play golf with him to build relationships, he has had dinner there. But instead of having lunch with the President, they want to have his lunch--over and over again.

The President has expressed a willingness continually to negotiate. And where are we now? We need to reopen the government. The House needs to pass the Senate clean short-term CR and raise the debt limit. Once it is open for business, we can talk about other matters.

Now let's go to tea party Republicans saying Democrats won't negotiate. Senate Democrats have tried to negotiate on the budget since we passed it on March 23. We were here for a marathon session led by Senator Murray--vote after vote, amendment after amendment--and we passed a budget resolution.

The rules of engagement and the rules for dispute resolution in the Congress are, take what one body passes, like the Senate, and meet with the House in a conference. Senator Murray was ready to go. She asked permission--which she has to do under the rules of the Senate--to have her budget conference to hammer out the budget with Paul Ryan and other House Members.

Nineteen times since March 23 Senator Murray has stood on this floor and asked for the ability to negotiate

with the House. Nineteen times she was blocked by six tea party Republicans. Nineteen times, using the rules to protect the voice of the minority--which I understand they used not only their voice but what was used to protect them to prohibit the Senate from meeting with their House counterparts.

So Senate Democrats want to negotiate. There is Paul Ryan. There is Patty Murray. Let's have the budget conference and hammer it out. The Democrats have been ready to negotiate on a budget since March 23, 2013.

Let's have a conversation? We have been trying to have that conversation since March. Who has stopped us? Harry Reid didn't stop Patty Murray. Chuck Schumer didn't stop the Budget Committee. Barbara Mikulski is not stopping it. Six tea party Republicans have stopped the ability of the Senate from going to the House to negotiate a budget.

Free the Budget Committee. Why is that so important? Because they not only come up with an overall budget in discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and revenues, but they put a cap on us appropriators. One of the outcomes of a budget agreement is they set the total amount of money the Appropriations Committee can spend on discretionary spending. To the shock of everybody, there is actually a cap on discretionary spending established by the Budget Committee. That has been the rule of the Budget Act going back to the 1970s. I would accept a cap agreed upon in a duly constituted process established by the rules of the House and the Senate--which is, we pass a budget, we meet in conference, we come back and give the appropriators what they call the 302(a)--the total cap we can spend--we take a look at it, and we meet and we follow the law. It also says what revenue should be and then total mandatory spending.

So when we hear Democrats won't negotiate--the Democrats have negotiated.

Going to this situation where we know the fiscal year expires October 1, the Senate put forth a bill. It came out of the Appropriations Committee. It was really, as the Chair, at my suggestion we would have a short-term funding resolution so we could deal with issues such as debt limit, canceling sequester for 2 years, and what our funding as a cap should be for 2014--short term, no new money, but a goal of getting us to canceling the sequester, following what the Budget Committee would set as the cap on us.

In order to get there, I was willing to compromise. I didn't want to. I felt it was too harsh, too rough on important discretionary spending. But sometimes you have to negotiate and compromise. So I was willing to compromise in order to get to negotiations. What was the compromise? The House has a level of $986 billion. It follows fiscal 2013 at the sequester level, meaning reduced by over $100 billion. I thought that $986 billion was too low. The Senate bill was $1.058 trillion. That is over a $70 billion difference.

But that is what a conference is. That is what negotiation is. So in order to get us across the dome into negotiations, I was willing to compromise, particularly on very important domestic spending.

The liberals who want to fund Head Start, who want to fund NIH--well, maybe we are not liberals. Maybe we are just Americans and, I believe, friends on the other side of the aisle--we were ready to go. So in my mind, as an appropriator, I have already compromised just to get us into the room. But they won't even take up that bill. They won't take up the bill that Speaker Boehner said he would pass if we agreed to their number--$986 billion--to get us into the room to talk. If you tell the Senate: If you agree with us on this, just to get a short-term negotiation going, we will pass it, and then you don't, why should we believe it will be any different?

But as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I am ready to negotiate. I am ready to compromise. I have reached out to my House counterpart, the chair of Appropriations. We have a marvelous, civil, candid relationship. We are ready to go to work.

We differ on money. There is no doubt. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Congressman Hal Rogers, is a wonderful gentleman, but I will tell you he is a rock-ribbed, no-nonsense fiscal conservative. But that is OK by Senator Barb because that is what compromise is. That is doing what Colin Powell asked us to do: Let's talk things over. Let's find some sensible center. Let's make sure we run the U.S. Government in a smart, frugal, effective way. That is what it would take.

We are ready to do it, but we need--I need Speaker Boehner to pass the short-term CR so we can even get into the room to do this. So when you say Senate Democrats will not negotiate or will not compromise, it is not true.

Also, I heard the junior Senator from Kentucky say that the Senate has not approved appropriations bills. The Appropriations Committee, despite being hamstrung by not having a budget, reported 11 appropriations bills. Eight of them were supported by Republicans. By August 1, our Appropriations Committee had marked up every single bill except one, Interior. We had marked them up with bipartisan support. Eight of them had bipartisan support; three did not: Labor-HHS, Financial Services, and Legislative Branch.

Why did we not get that? Because the Labor-HHS bill and Financial Services play a role in funding ObamaCare. There we go again. Don't do anything that would fund ObamaCare. There we go again.

I am so fed up with those riders, those poison-pen riders. We could have done that to them. We chose not to. I would like to see the comprehensive immigration bill passed. I didn't put any riders on the appropriations bills coming out of the Senate. I would have liked to have seen a farm bill. That has been worked on so hard by Senator Stabenow, the Senator from Michigan, and Senator Roberts, the Senator from Kansas--they worked wonderfully on a bipartisan farm bill. It was something to be proud of in the Senate. I would have liked to have attached that to the continuing. But we decided no riders, nothing cute, nothing clever, no earmarks, nothing like that--straightforward money bills ready to go to conference.

We could not get it, but they are passed. They are passed in the Appropriations Committee and we are waiting to get to work.

The Republicans, the tea party Republicans say they do not have the votes in the House to reopen government. Give it a chance. Put the vote to the floor. If we win, government is reopened. If we lose, at least we offered a suggestion and we can go back to the drawing board. But the solution to reopening the government lies on Speaker Boehner's desk. He says he wants to have a conversation. We say pick it up, have the vote. That puts the conversation to work for a short-term funding resolution.

We say to our six Republican Senators who have blocked the Budget Committee, let the Budget Committee go to conference. Let Senator Patty Murray and Congressman Paul Ryan meet to resolve these issues. Let's follow the regular order. Let's get back to the way this government and this country should function.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask that the Senate stand in recess until 2:15.

Mr. President, I rise to respectfully say that we in the Senate and we in the Congress have to do what our constituents elected us to do and what the Constitution requires us to do: keep the United States Government open and make sure the United States of America pays its bills. To do that, we are open to negotiation and examining a variety of ideas, but the main idea is to go through the regular order in the committee process.

We can keep the government open and we can meet our responsibility on the public debt if we embark upon two solutions and they are in the hands of the other party. We call upon the House to pass the Senate continuing funding resolution that would reopen government and keep it going until November 15. It is not a long-term solution. If we get to it right now, we will fund it at 2013 levels, acknowledging the sequester level. That was a big compromise. I compromised, as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, to move that continuing funding resolution. It was $70 billion less than what I wanted, but in order to get us in a room and get the conversation going and the negotiations going, I was willing to compromise.

I call upon the House to pass that. I call upon the Senate Republicans who have objected to going to the Budget Committee to lift their objection so we can take the Senate-passed budget and go to conference so we can get a budget.

Why is this important? For those who say we have to control spending, there is nobody who disputes that, but the way we control spending is to go through the regular budget process. I say to many of my colleagues who might not understand the Budget Control Act and I say to the American people who are listening, the way to control discretionary spending is to pass a budget that sets a cap on what the appropriators can spend in domestic spending.

I heard the wonderful Senator and distinguished war hero from Arizona John McCain ask us to get to it today. I agree. Let's get to it today and lift the objection for Senator Murray, the chair of the Budget Committee, to take appointed conferees so they can negotiate on the budget.

I say to my colleagues--again, to explain the Budget Control Act--we appropriators are not wild spenders. We appropriators can't go rogue in terms of wild runaway spending. We have a budget cap imposed upon us through a budget process and something called a 302(a), but we can't get the cap on spending unless the Budget Committee is able to move. This is very serious.

I have the high honor of representing the State of Maryland, and I see my colleague from Maryland, Senator Cardin, on the floor. We represent 5\1/2\ million people and a lot of civilian agencies. I note also on the floor are the distinguished Senators from Virginia, both of whom are former Governors of Virginia.

Between the four of us, we represent the largest concentration of Federal employees in the world. We represent Federal employees from the Department of Defense to the National Institutes of Health, to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. There is a rollcall of honor in service and duty that makes the United States a stronger country, a stronger economy, and so on.

When we speak about government, we know what we are talking about, and we know what is going on. Many have spoken about opening NIH. I want to open NIH. NIH, which is a clinical hospital, is not accepting new patients. This week 200 people have been turned away. Children in the United States of America were turned away. It is not just Barb Mikulski talking, the Washington Post reported on a lady who has cancer and wants to come to NIH, but she can't get into a clinical trial because it is closed down. They say: Senator Barb, open NIH. But we have to open the rest of the government.

Right now the Centers for Disease Control has a substantial number of its workforce furloughed. Having the CDC closed constitutes a danger to public health. Right this minute in 18 States, 278 people have been sickened by salmonella. Thank God there have been no deaths, but it is making people very sick. We don't have CDC on the job to track diseases and alert the public health departments around the United States of America so they can stand sentry to protect people against salmonella. Open the CDC. Open the whole government.

Just this week, in our own metropolitan area, a worker was killed trying to service the Metro. This should be under investigation. There was one death and several injuries. There was a bus crash in Tennessee, but right this very minute the National Transportation Safety Board has the majority of their people furloughed. They can't investigate the Metro accident, and they can't investigate the bus crash in Tennessee.

A few weeks ago Senator Cardin and I were informed that a person had a terrible accident on the Bay Bridge in which a car went over the side of the bridge. We asked for an investigation to make sure our bridge is safe. That was under way, but now it is going to be delayed.

Let's take our FBI. Our FBI agents are on the job. They are being paid with IOUs. A group of FBI agents, called Voices from the Field, said to us, their U.S. Government: Guess what. We don't have gas for our cars. The FBI does not have gas for its cars. The agents' gas allowance is limited to 200 miles per week, and they can't even buy gas out of their own pocket.

Not only is the FBI running out of gas, I think we are running out of gas here. The way we fuel our tanks and get America running and rolling again is to reopen government. The way we reopen government is for Mr. Boehner, the Speaker of the House, in his job as Speaker, to bring up the vote on reopening the government and vote on the Senate-passed resolution.

We say to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to lift their objection to the Budget Committee going to conference so the Budget Committee can come up with a budget with their caps on domestic discretionary spending. We will cap all discretionary spending. We appropriators will abide by the cap. We will not have runaway spending, and we will not go rogue. We will follow the rules, but I think we all need to follow the rules. Under the statutory requirement of the Budget Control Act, they were supposed to bring the budget back April 15. We passed one on March 23 and we have been waiting and waiting.

I wish to join with my colleague from Arizona. Let's get to it. Let's get the job done. Let's reopen government. Let's pay our bills. I am willing to negotiate. I am willing to compromise.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Levin be the next Democratic speaker following Senator Schumer's remarks.

Before I go into my commends, I want to express my thanks to the Capitol Police, to the Secret Service, and to all who responded to yesterday's pretty scary and dramatic incident. I also want to express my hope that the injured Capitol Police officer quickly and fully recovers, and to the little girl who has now been left without her mother--I hope that as this great tragedy unfolds, we give support to the people who have suffered.

My colleague from Texas has laid out a vision of how he would like to see the day end. He would like to see the day end with funding for VA, NIH, and with the Park Service open, and I think there was one more item, but I will stick with those three--NIH, FDA and VA. He would like to see them open for business at the end of the day.

I have a different vision for the end of the day. At the end of the day today, I would like to see the House of Representatives consider and vote on the Senate-passed continuing funding resolution that would reopen the entire Federal Government and keep it open--not for a long term because we have fiscal issues through November 15--at fiscal year 2013 levels. At the end of the day, if they took up the Senate-passed resolution and actually voted on it, the Federal Government would be open.

At the end of the day, people would actually be back on the job, getting paid for the job they signed up to do, and we would have the Government of the United States of America working the way it should.

At the end of the day, it means the Capitol Hill police officers who were at their duty stations would get their pay. Now they are working without pay.

Under my vision of America, if we open the entire U.S. Government, it means FBI agents who are currently working and doing their job protecting America would be paid. Right now, FBI agents and other Federal law enforcement are working for IOUs. Those very FBI agents we count on are using their own money to put gas in the cars they need to use to go after the bad guys or the bad girls. So under the Mikulski recommendation that was passed by the Senate, at the end of the day, FBI agents would be paid and they wouldn't have to use their own money to put gas in their cars. That is what my vision of the end of the day is. We have to reopen government.

The cynical strategy of the other side, given with ruffles and flourishes and pomp--self-righteously standing up for our veterans, opening our national parks, and funding NIH--really is hollow. It would be great if they actually understood how government works.

Let's take the VA disability claim process. In order to get your disability benefits, your eligibility is determined not only by the VA but with information you get from the civilian workforce at DOD, from the Social Security Administration headquartered in Woodlawn, MD--where 9,000 Federal employees are furloughed--or you would get it from the Internal Revenue Service--also headquartered in Maryland, where 5,000 Federal employees are furloughed. So if we reopened the government, at the end of the day, yes, veterans would get their benefits, but they will get them because not only is the VA open but so is Social Security, and the civilian workforce will be working at DOD and the people who work at the Internal Revenue Service will be there making sure all the paperwork is done in the way it should be. That is what the end of the day should look like.

My colleague from Texas talks about how he would like to reopen NIH. Oh, boy, so would I. Seventy-one percent of the people at NIH right this minute are furloughed. He wants to, at the end of the day, open NIH. So do I. But I also know that after they do their research and they have engaged in all of that, our private sector comes in and begins to develop the products, and they need to take those great ideas--the great ideas that turn into the new products that will save lives and create jobs in the United States--to the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration.

So at the end of the day, we want to help NIH stay open, to find the cures for the diseases we want them to find, but we also want the private sector inventing the products to be able to take those great ideas and turn them into what can save lives here and to be able to sell them around the world because they have been certified as safe and effective. So at the end of the day, I would like to open the FDA.

But I don't want to do it one agency at a time. I want to reopen the entire Federal Government. It seems that whenever we now shame them with regard to the reality of the closing of a particular agency, they then decide that agency is important and the House then passes a bill. I don't want shame, I don't want blame, and I don't want political games. I want the Government of the United States of America to be open.

Now let's go to another agency. They haven't even talked about some of these other agencies. Let's take the weather service. Right now storm clouds are gathering not only here in Washington, DC, over politics, but they are gathering in the Southeast. A hurricane is on its way. The weather service is also in Maryland. Eight hundred people are supposed to be on their job.

I was there during another hurricane, just a few months ago. Last October, I was there while they were at their duty station for Hurricane Sandy. We watched this hurricane come. It was devastating. We all recall how devastating it was. In my own State, my mountain counties were hit by a blizzard, and down over on the eastern shore, they were hit by the hurricane, wiping out whole communities and neighborhoods, some people owning family homes and farms that go back generations.

Those very weather service people are furloughed. They are absolutely furloughed. The weather service is calling them back, but they are going to be working without pay.

Let me put a human face on what I am talking about. Yesterday I spoke to Amy Fritz. She works at the weather service. She has two master's degrees, one in meteorology and the other as a physical oceanographer. Her job is to predict storm surges coming from the hurricane. Her work helps to predict how walls of water will come ashore and knowing where that is going to happen, what is going to happen, and how we can begin to protect ourselves so that while we try to save property we can definitely provide protection for lives.

Amy is the primary breadwinner in her family. She is now not getting paid. She has $130,000 in student loans so she could get that great education. And she wanted that great education because she thought: I can serve America. I can be a good scientist and a great American. Well, at the end of the day, I want the weather service open. At the end of the day, I want Amy getting paid.

At the end of the day, I want the entire Federal Government open, not just whatever agency emerges as part of their strategy. Every part of the Federal Government somewhere is playing an essential part in the lives of people in this country and to the communities which they serve.

Last night there was something called the ``Sammie'' Awards. These are awards given to Federal employees

because of their outstanding service. They have either saved lives or they have saved money. Well, let me tell you, there was one Federal employee at the National Institutes of Standards. He has a new way of being able to protect us against fires. Another Federal employee, who has also been furloughed, has come up with how to save $1 billion. Employee after employee.

I say to all the Federal employees who might be watching: At the end of the day, I think you are important. At the end of the day, whatever job you do, I want you to do it well. I want you to strive for competence and excellence. But I want to do my job well. I extend my hand to the other side of the aisle, as I have done repeatedly during the year I have chaired this Committee on Appropriations. I have negotiated, I have compromised, and I will continue to do the same, because at the end of the day I want the Federal Government open doing the job those people were trained to do and that we hired them to do. I want the Federal employees to be able to be at their job, doing the duty they signed up for. Every job has an important mission, whether you are a meat inspector, a poultry inspector, or you work at the weather service.

So we can continue to do this, where they send over to us one program at a time. My gosh. Once again, we are wasting time. And where is our standing in the world? At the end of the day, I want us to be respected. I want us to be respected. What do they think about us around the world? In hearing after hearing, there is a lot of hand- wringing and chest-pounding over what we need to do about China, but China isn't doing this to us. We are doing it to ourselves. There is no foreign predator attacking our Federal Government, we are just defunding it. That is what a shutdown is. We are not funding the Federal Government.

This is not the way the United States of America should be operating. I know the calls I am getting from the over 100,000 Federal employees I represent, and they want to be on their job. It is not only they want to get paid, they actually want to work. And you know, they are prohibited from taking anything home where they could be working. This is terrible.

So at the end of the day, let us find a new way. At the end of the day, let us find a new way to keep the government open. At the end of the day, let us be proud of ourselves and let the Federal Government be reopened.

I once again conclude my remarks by saying to the House of Representatives: Please, take up the Senate's continuing funding resolution that would reopen the Federal Government right away and get us at the desk so that we could negotiate further fiscal compromises. That is the way I would like to see the day end.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They can beat the drum, raise the flag, sound the bugle all that they

want, to say they want to fund veterans' benefits, but unless the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service are reopened, they are still placing our veterans at a disadvantage. We need to reopen the whole government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around Rockville Pike, there are several agencies, and I have already said their names: The National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That is affecting businesses up and down Rockville Pike. People aren't buying their groceries, they are not buying gas. I am going to say more about that in a little while.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the little gal who should have a government on their side. I want to make sure he has a chance to speak, and I will be back later on to speak on the floor again.

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

Madam President, I wish to speak as if in morning business and consume as much time as is necessary.

Wow, I think we are growing weary. I think we are growing weary of the gridlock, deadlock, and hammer lock on our government. I think we are growing weary of the partisan posturing by one faction in one party in one House. The American people want us to reopen government so that the government can meet the national security needs of the United States, protect the safety of the people of the United States, meet compelling human needs, and do what we can to create jobs today, such as physical infrastructure, and to lay the groundwork for jobs tomorrow by investing in research and development.

The American people want a government that works as hard as they do, and so do I. Instead of working hard to serve our veterans or our elderly or promoting a growing economy, we are dealing with the shutdown of the government.

The House is sending us bills which on first blush seem attractive. I mean, who doesn't support our National Guard? Who doesn't want to fund NIH? I certainly do. NIH is located in my State. I am so proud of the men and women who work there. Funding also goes to great State universities doing research, such as the University of Wisconsin. They are out there doing it. We cannot cherry-pick. What they are doing now is a public relations ploy.

The House wants to send us cherry-picked solutions to the shutdown problem. It is contrived, and it is cynical. What I am asking the House of Representatives to do is take up the Senate bill we sent them that is a clean continued funding resolution. What does clean mean? It means it is stripped of politically motivated ideological riders.

The second thing is it would fund the government for 6 weeks. In that 6 weeks, it would give us the chance to work out what our funding should be for the rest of the year. I would hope we could find a way to cancel the sequester, which is to reduce public debt without reducing jobs or opportunity, and get us through the debt ceiling. Please--that bill is pending in the House now, and I ask that they do that instead of sending us these piecemeal solutions.

I remind my colleagues that the continuing funding resolution passed the Senate last Friday. It reopens the government, and it gives us the opportunity to renegotiate. I am willing to negotiate, but we can't capitulate to these partisan demands to defund ObamaCare and do other kinds of riders that work against us. To move forward, we need to pass the Senate continuing resolution.

I understand that later today the President is meeting with Speaker Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and Senator McConnell. I hope that wiser heads will now prevail so we can get a path forward to reopen all of government, not just cherry-picked items--many of which are absolutely desirable--and open the entire Federal Government.

I know that the House wants to send something over to reopen NIH. Of course. That's what I just said. But what about the Centers for Disease Control? So we open NIH, but we don't open the Centers for Disease Control. It is an agency that is located in Atlanta, but it is part of our public health triad, which is the work at NIH, the work of the Food and Drug Administration, which stands sentry over the safety of our food supply and the safety and efficacy of our drugs and medical devices, and then there is the Centers for Disease Control, which is down in Atlanta.

Right this very minute in Atlanta, GA, at the Centers for Disease Control, close to 9,000 people have been furloughed. Furlough is just a nice word that means layoff. It also means that it not only affects the labs in Atlanta, but it also affects labs in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

The work of the CDC is also nationwide because they are our biosurveillance system on infectious diseases. That means that State health departments--all 50 States and the territories--depend on the Centers for Disease Control to track and give them information on what the trends are related to infectious diseases. They are the ones who alert clinicians and pediatricians if there is a new kind of ear infection that could infect children. But because of the government shutdown, there is no one there who can do this.

Earlier this year--to give an example--Hepatitis A sickened 162 people in 10 States. The CDC linked the outbreak to pomegranate seeds coming in from a foreign country in a frozen berry mix. We were able to go right to the private sector. They complied with us right away, and we were able to get that off the market and contain this so it wouldn't spread to other people. They worked with the private sector in order to protect the American people.

Don't we want to reopen CDC? I could go over disease after disease and infection after infection which will not monitored. Let's take the common one, flu. We have all had the sniffles, but the sniffles can also kill people. On average more 200,000 Americans will be hospitalized because of flu and 3,000 Americans die from flu. Vaccines can prevent the flu.

The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, were out there making sure there was enough vaccine available, that it was being distributed fairly and equitably in the United States, but also watching the infection trends because if a trend was heading to one State or one locale, the public health people could work together in order to accelerate or expand our flu vaccine. This is what they do.

Did you also know that there are disease detectives? Many people don't know that there are disease detectives. So what does Senator Barb mean when she says this?

Sometimes there is an outbreak and people get sick. People even die. They wonder what it is. They dial 911, and there is a group of people who are like a disease identification SWAT team. They work with the best and brightest at that State level, use the best technology in science from our country, and even around the world, to identify what that is. That is how we found out about Legionnaires' disease, and the Hantavirus disease which affected Indian reservations. That is how we

jumped in on the pomegranate seed situation. They get right in there. But you know what. Those people were furloughed. What is this?

Do I want to reopen NIH? I absolutely do, but I am going to talk about the Centers for Disease Control. I could also talk about other Federal employees and what shutting down means. It obviously isn't just public health.

I believe in Social Security. I really do. It has meant so much to so many people. It is one of the great earned benefits in our country. I want to make sure there is no false alarm here: Social Security checks will go out. However, as of this week, the people who work at Social Security, those who oversee eligibility benefits for the elderly and disability benefits for those who are unable to work, have been furloughed. Over the entire United States of America, Social Security has furloughed--there are 18,000 people who work in Social Security offices in local communities that were furloughed.

Social Security is everywhere. They provide access for the American people to apply for their Social Security, to apply for disability benefits, and also to apply for their Medicare--18,000 people. Social Security is headquartered in Maryland. This isn't because it is in Maryland. I know these workers. I know the exams they take to qualify to work for Social Security--whether it is a claims representative or an actuary predicting the trends. Those 18,000 people were proud to work for Social Security and make sure that one of the greatest social insurance programs ever was administered efficiently, effectively, and that the people who were eligible got what they earned.

Did you know that the overhead for running Social Security is less than 2 percent? It is lower than any private insurance company in America. Gosh. So they do it well and they do it smartly. They have been stretched because of sequester, but they are there. Right now, because of what we have been doing, we are only going to further delay these other benefits. So I want to open the doors of Social Security. When people apply, they want to be sure help is there. When people dial, they want people to be there.

That is all, by the way, coming back to NIH and what they want to send over from the House. It is in the Labor-HHS appropriations. That is under my very able subcommittee chairman, Senator Tom Harkin.

Senator Harkin has worked very hard on his bill to make sure we meet the needs but we do it in a way that is cost-efficient. Did my colleagues know that because of parliamentary obstructionism, Senator Harkin has not been able to bring his bill to the floor since 2007-- 2007, year after year, hearing after hearing. When he wanted to bring up the funding for the Department of HHS, which these agencies are in-- Education, as well as the Department of Labor, which has things such as mining safety in it--he could not even bring it to the floor because they would not let him or it would be filibustered.

While everybody over there is strutting around saying we are going to fund NIH, after we shamed them into it yesterday, what they don't tell us is they can't move the Labor-HHS bill in the House. Do we know why? Because they fund it at $122 billion. Do we know what level that is? That is the 2003 level. It is not even the 2012 level or the 2010 level. They want to fund it back to George Bush and right around the funding level of 2003. They want to take us back a decade. They want to take us back to the Dark Ages. Well, not in the Senate.

Senator Harkin wanted to come to the floor with funding at $164 billion, a slight increase from last year. There is a 42-percent difference between the House and the Senate Labor-HHS bill: $164 billion to $122 billion.

I want Senator Harkin to be able to bring his bill to the floor and debate it. Do we want an NIH? Let's fund it. Do we want a Centers for Disease Control, which is in the State of Georgia, with two excellent Senators from Georgia. Then fund it. Let's debate. Let's discuss. Let's amend. Senator Harkin cannot even get it to the floor. Over in the House, they can't move it either because the funding for Health and Human Services, Education, and the Department of Labor is at the 2003 level. So while they want to send us an individual bill for an individual agency--for HHS and so on--as desirable as it is, I want to reopen government. That is what the Senate bill is. I want to reopen negotiations. I would like to return to a regular order, where using the parliamentary tools, tactics, and even tricks cannot delay bringing a bill to the floor. Since 2007, Senator Harkin has not been able to bring a bill to the floor for an open debate, unfettered by filibuster, to be able to discuss this.

So this is what this is all about. This isn't about numbers. This is about meeting compelling human needs. In the Labor-HHS subcommittee, we fund NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, the Social Security Administration, mining safety, Department of Education. This is what we should be working on. We should be working on education, money for the disabled, et cetera.

So I come to the floor again as the chair of the Appropriations Committee. I am proud of the work my subcommittee chairmen have done in getting bills ready to come to the floor for debate by following regular order. I so appreciate the cooperation we have received from the other side of the aisle in our committee. There has been a great sense of cooperation. We have had disputes and disagreements on funding levels and even matters of policy, but I had an open amendment process. Everybody had their say. Everybody had their day. We moved the bills forward. That is called regular order. That is called democracy. Everybody has their day and everybody has their say. But let's move the bill.

So let's reopen government. Let's have a true negotiation. I hope that out of the 5:30 meeting will come a path forward. But we have one now: Pass the Senate resolution in the House, come back, and let's let the work of the Senate and the U.S. Government get going again.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I rise to continue the discussion on the situation in which we find ourselves, which is that the entire Government of the United States of America has been shut down, and those Federal employees who are working are working without pay.

This is a terrible situation. I implore the House to pass a clean short-term continuing funding resolution that the Senate sent over to them 4 days ago so we can reopen the government. Let's reopen the government. Let's reopen the Government of the United States of America. The way we reopen the government is to pass the Senate continuing funding resolution.

What would it do? It would fund the government at fiscal 2013 levels. That doesn't mean it adds new money; so there is no new money. It is keeping us at current spending levels. We would have a short-term continuing resolution until November 15 while we work out other issues, and then we can get over the speed bump of raising the debt ceiling. I believe that is the path forward.

Where we are now has terrible consequences. It has terrible consequences for our economy. It has terrible consequences for our standing in the world. It has terrible consequences for the functioning of our government.

We are speaking now about a shutdown of the government. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women who work for the Federal Government who signed up to do a job in the service of their Nation. They have literally, with the passing hours, had to either take a furlough--and a furlough means we have essentially laid them off; we have laid them off--or they are working because their work is essential, such as an FBI agent, but they are not getting paid. We are paying them with IOUs. This is not the United States of America.

I am thinking about those people who are working every single day. Let me paint a picture for my colleagues. In my own State, we are the headquarters to the National Weather Agency. People who watch TV think they get their weather news from either the Weather Channel or they get it from their local TV or radio station through doppler radar. It is terrific. But guess where they get their information. They get it from their Federal Government. They get it from the weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who work hard every day predicting the weather and getting out the information that news people can use in their own community. So if a person is a farmer, he is getting that information. If a person is a waterman who works on the Chesapeake Bay and he has to make sure the storm is not coming while he is out there crabbing or oystering to keep his business going, he needs to know the weather. Whether a person is a county executive or a mayor, people need to know what their weather is going to be. So they have been on the job, whether they have been predicting hurricanes or tornadoes or giving us the basic day-to-day information. The weather forecasters are at their duty station, but what are we saying to them now? Guess what. Be there, but we are not going to pay you except through IOUs.

Yesterday I spoke about the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration in my State. There is another major agency which is not in my State but very important to the functioning of our country: the Centers for Disease Control. Right now, they are working down there in Georgia. What is the Centers for Disease Control? What is their job? Their job is exactly that: disease control. When veterans and other people were ill and getting sick in a hospital in Philadelphia, they were called in because they are our top biosleuths in America. They are our own bioforensic scientists, our own bio-CSI team. They were the ones who found out about something called Legionnaires' Disease, and they helped those people who got sick in that hotel, and were able to put out that information. They are the ones who are standing sentry to make sure there is no emerging surprise or pandemic in the world. They are the ones who are gathering information now to know the latest threats to the health and safety of the United States of America.

What is it they are doing? If a person is a pediatrician, they are watching the CDC to see what are the latest causes of ear infections that could be infecting children and the right treatment to help them, the right treatment for their doctors to be able to know. That is what they do. When their labs are being closed, it leaves States on their own--State health departments--to be able to look out for antibiotic- resistant viruses and other infectious diseases, and a variety of other kinds of things. We need the Centers for Disease Control. They employ thousands of people in Atlanta, GA. Yet we are telling them: Well, maybe not the way we need you.

Yesterday, the President passed a bill to guarantee military personnel be paid on time. We support that. But what is missing from the bill is important. The intelligence community, made up mostly of civilians, will not be covered. It means that over 72 percent who work in our intelligence agencies will either face furloughs or will be working with IOUs.

Who else involved in our national security is not covered? We didn't cover border security. We didn't cover FBI. We didn't cover DEA. We didn't cover the U.S. Marshals. What are the marshals doing? It is not like Wyatt Earp. Marshals aren't just out there like cowboys in a Wild West movie when we watch a miniseries. The Marshals Service is very important. Do my colleagues know what they are doing in Maryland right now? First of all, they provide security in the courthouse. They do the security to protect the judges. We have some of the most violent gangs and criminals coming in and the marshals need to protect those who are enforcing the law through the judicial system.

They are also going after the sexual predators. They are the ones who track all of the evidence and go after sexual predators to make sure they are not loose in the neighborhoods, and they are working with local law enforcement.

They also go after missing fugitives. We know about the big signs that say ``Ten Most Wanted.'' Well, guess who goes after them. The Marshals Service. That is one of their primary responsibilities. That is what Federal law enforcement is. These employees are also critical to national security.

Trying to do this piecemeal--oh, we have looked out for our troops. We should look out for our troops. But while we look out for our troops, we should look out for those who come back home.

I know the Presiding Officer and others have been strong supporters of our veterans. I am a strong supporter of our veterans. Many of the services being performed by the VA are open, such as VA health care, but there are other services where we have to delay the backlog on veterans' cases, veterans' disability benefits. Through appropriations, we have actually put money in the Federal checkbook to deal with more training, more overtime to reduce this backlog.

When we speak about shutdowns, I want to take a moment to talk about my own office in relationship to veterans. I am the longest serving woman in Senate history. It is a great honor. In my 25 years as a Senator and after 25 years as the senior woman here, I have only closed down my office twice: once in 1995 and this morning. I cannot express to my colleagues the heavy heart I had when I talked to my staff. My staff is a great staff. Whether they are working in Maryland or whether they are working here in Washington, we are a local phone call away to 6 million Marylanders. Of those people who work for me, one is a young lady. I hope I don't embarrass her if she is watching TV. Her name is Denise. Denise has worked for me for 30 years, back when I was in the House of Representatives and now as a Senator. She is a caseworker, a constituent service worker. For 30 years she has specialized in helping me respond to the needs of veterans. Veterans all over Maryland love her. They depend on her, and I depend on her so that I can help those veterans.

I know my time has expired, but Denise's time on the job shouldn't expire. I want to make sure Denise is on her job. I want to reopen my office. I want to make sure we reopen government. We can do that if we pass the Senate continuing resolution.

Hello to the House. Don't send us piecemeal. Let the House vote on the Senate bill. No gag rule in the House. Free the House, open the House, open government, and let's get the job done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are at the brink. We are only hours away from a possible government shutdown. All over my State and all over the Nation there are very devoted Federal employees who are waiting to hear: Are we going to be called nonessential to performing important government services?

Should they come in tomorrow? People have applied for small business loans. Are those loans going to be processed? People have applied for student loans. Are they going to be processed?

What is going to happen to the National Weather Service? What is going to happen at NIH? What is going to happen at the Food and Drug Administration, where people stand sentry over the safety of our food supply and our drug supply.

We don't know because we have just tabled the radical bill that the House sent over to us. It was deliberately designed to be politically provocative. Continuing resolutions were always about disputes over money. They were not about political, ideological viewpoints over past legislation.

I am pleased that what we did was to table it and send it back to the House. The Senate acted very responsibly last week on a short-term continuing funding resolution that got rid of politically motivated riders and kept the government working for the American people until November 15 to work out our differences on funding bills.

The House sent this back--yet one more bill that says if you don't delay the Affordable Care Act for 1 year, we will shut down the government. If you don't eliminate the benefits affecting prevention and particularly women's health, we will shut down the government. If the government shuts down tomorrow, it will be because of the House's viewpoint: My way or the highway.

A government shutdown is a serious matter. These are a few things that will happen if we don't come together across the aisle, across the dome, and across town to pass a clean short-term continuing resolution. I wish to take a minute to highlight how damaging a government shutdown is on the day-to-day lives of our American people and our economy.

Shutting down the Federal Government will have immediate and harmful consequences on our economy. Small Business Administration approval loans will be put on hold, and 28 million small businesses will no longer have access to federally assisted loans or technical assistance.

In the rural areas, the USDA Rural Development housing, farm loan and grant program will stop.

Let's go to the safety of our waterways. The Army Corps of Engineers will stop work on all flood control and navigation projects. This is what helps ensure that our ships can travel through America's waterways, whether they are coming up the Chesapeake Bay into the Port of Baltimore or they are traveling down the Mississippi River or the Missouri River or coming into the gulf.

The Department of Commerce will stop economic development, minority business, and international trade assistance programs.

I know that the House passed a separate amendment funding active duty military. I would hope so. These are men and women who put themselves in the line of duty.

I also wish to remind people that there are other people every day who are doing a job to protect the health, safety, and laws of the American people. I represent all of the men and women who work at the Food and Drug Administration. It is headquartered in my State, and 2,000 people--or 55 percent--will be furloughed at midnight.

FDA will stop monitoring imports at our borders. What does that mean? Those men and women whose job it is to stand sentry over the food supply of the United States of America, we are going to tell them they are nonessential. If they stand sentry over the safety of our drugs and our medical devices, we are telling them they are nonessential. I don't think the American people support that. They might be a little bit cranky about the Federal Government here or there, but I think they want their food to be safe, their drugs to be safe, and they want us to move ahead with these devices to make sure they are in clinical practice.

Over at the National Institutes of Health, which is located in Bethesda, MD--the National Institutes of Health and their subsidiaries that receive extramural funding throughout the United States of America--70 percent of the staff at NIH will be furloughed. Seventy percent of the 10,000 men and women who work at NIH will be furloughed at midnight. These are the people who are working on the cure for Alzheimer's, they are working on the cure for autism, and they are working on the cure for arthritis, and I am just going through the ``a'' words. We could go on to the ``b'' words. How about breast cancer? How about cancer itself? Last year, when the NIH announced that cancer rates in America had been reduced by 15 percent, instead of pinning medals on the people at NIH and the private sector who worked with us on important drugs and biological products, we announced sequester. What kind of government would destroy the very agency that is set up to come up with cures in the case of Alzheimer's cognitive stretch-out? Seventy percent. And who are they? They are the lab technician people. They are the people who help run the administrative end of things, which enables those talented researchers to be able to do this.

The NIH Clinical Center won't be able to admit new patients or start new clinical trials. The NIH Clinical Center is a hospital at NIH. You don't go there unless you are really sick and unless you are really desperate and unless you really have no place to go. You go in with no hope. But that is what they have nicknamed NIH around America--not the National Institutes of Health but the National Institutes of Hope, that what they are doing today is going to lead to solving the problems of tomorrow. Why? Why are we furloughing 70 percent? And not only are we furloughing, we are saying: Bye-bye for now. You are nonessential.

Well, I think they are crucial. I think they are not only essential, but I think they are crucial. So I worry about what are our priorities.

Then we go to the weather forecasters. Oh, they will be on the job. They are located in my State too.

You might say: Well, do you have any people who work in the private sector?

People in Maryland work in the private sector because of the public sector.

Our law enforcement, our FBI, will be on the job. They are in the line of fire too, but they will be getting an IOU. Instead of an IOU, we should say to the FBI and to our border patrol and to our marshals, who are chasing sexual predators and human traffickers, not an IOU, we owe you a debt of gratitude. We owe you getting your pay on time. We shouldn't hide the fact you haven't received a cost of living for 3 years. And we shouldn't be dancing around with ideologically motivated shutdowns.

Social Security checks will go out, but the 18,000 people who will visit Social Security offices will find they are understaffed. On the average, half a million people call Social Security every day. They are going to get either no answer or a busy signal.

I could go on and on about what the consequences of a shutdown will be. We really cannot do that. So I say to my colleagues on the other side of the dome, please, let's pass a clean CR. Let's pass it to November 15. Let's negotiate on a middle-ground number. They have a budget number of $988 billion, and they accept sequester as the new norm. Let's find a way to cancel sequester at least for 2 years.

I marked up the appropriations bills at $1.058 trillion. That is the number the Senate passed in its Budget Committee in April. There is a $70 billion

difference. I am ready to negotiate, but we can't capitulate. Let's find a middle ground.

There was a great American general and a great statesman and a real American icon--Colin Powell. Over and over during the Reagan administration he would say: Let's find that sensible center. Let's find that sensible center.

Let's avoid a shutdown. Let's stop playing slam-down politics. Let's come together and find a way to solve the problem of keeping the government open as well as a long-term fiscal solution for paying down our government's debt. I understand that. But also let's make sure we have a progrowth budget that lowers the unemployment rate, raises educational achievement, finds those cures for diseases affecting the American people. Let's have an FDA that can get them approved, ensuring safety and efficacy in the hands of our doctors here and doctors all over the world. Let's make sure that when we talk about American exceptionalism, we know where it comes from.

Mr. President, I know there are other colleagues who wish to speak. I now yield the floor.

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

I rise to once again speak about where we are, where we ought to be, and where I hope we will be.

It is now 8:30 in the evening. We are 3\1/2\ hours, essentially, until the government begins to shut down. Can we believe this? We are the United States of America. We are a superpower. We are supposed to be a nation governed by rule of law, and we are about to shut down--not shut us down because of a catastrophic event that hit us. It is not as if a meteor has streaked across the sky and hit the United States of America, taking out our power grid and rendering us powerless.

It is not as if we have been hit by a global pandemic that would bring us to our knees. We are in a self-induced act, about to shut down the functioning of the government of the United States of America. I find this shocking.

I have been through this in the mid-1990s. It is deeply disturbing to the people who work for the Federal Government, who get up every day and go to their job trying to perform a service or a function they consider important to the United States, whether it is in transportation, protecting the environment, Federal law enforcement, important financial regulatory agencies, such as our consumer protection agency or our financial services or the Consumer Product Safety Commission in my own State, which protects us and particularly our children against harmful products.

So there are those functions that are going to be shut down. You know what is going to be said to those people--to the men and women who work for the United States of America. Most of you are considered nonessential.

That might be a witty throwaway line for a cable TV show, but I happen to think they are very essential and so does the rest of America.

These people are performing very important functions to protect America.

The House feels it protected America by passing a military pay bill. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent. But guess what. It still means almost 50 percent of the men and women who work at the Department of Defense will be furloughed tomorrow. They are going to be told they are nonessential. Who is essential to defense and who isn't? We certainly know our men and women who wear the uniform and who are in harm's way need to get their pay. They need to get their supplies. They need to get what they need to defend America, but they also need a fully functioning Department of Defense.

I think there are other agencies that protect the United States, one of which is Federal law enforcement--whether it is the FBI, the Marshal Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and, yes, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They put themselves in the line of fire too, along with our Customs and our Border Patrol agents, some of whom have already died. What about our prison guards who are there facing people who are ready to either kill them or break out or break them up at the first chance they can get.

We don't have to pursue this route. Remember, this is self-induced. It is, as our President said, being induced by one faction in one party in one House of our government over one issue--not funding, but should we fund the President's Affordable Care Act. That is the law of the land. It is already in existence, and a good part of it will go into effect on October 1.

When I talk about this, I am speaking from the standpoint of being the chair of the committee called the Appropriations Committee. That is the committee that puts money into the Federal checkbook. That Federal checkbook keeps the entire discretionary funding for the U.S. Government operating--and it is $1 trillion. Wow. What a number. Gasp. You know what. It is a big number, but it is a big country with big responsibilities.

That is not the total funding of the Federal Government because there is mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is our Social Security benefits, our veterans' benefits, earned benefits--earned benefits. All of that is over several other trillion dollars. There is a dispute about how much the spending should be. That is an honest dispute. That is what funding disputes and resolutions should be about. I should be in a room right this very minute with my House counterpart, Congressman Hal Rogers, the Republican chairman, a fine, honorable man from Kentucky, and my Democratic counterpart Congresswoman Nita Lowey from New York, along with my vice chairman, Senator Richard Shelby, another fine Southern gentleman, a fiscal conservative, and we should be discussing that.

But that is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about what is the House's number, what is the Senate's number, what is the best number to fund our government and do it in a way that is smart, effective, and frugal. Oh no. The big fight is over ObamaCare. That is not what it should be about. We have had something called continuing resolutions before. A continuing resolution should have another word in it--``funding.'' It is the continued funding resolution, and it is to keep government funded while we resolve our disputes.

These resolutions were always, No. 1, short term, and No. 2, they focused on fiscal differences--where did we disagree on fiscal matters. And there is disagreement. The House marked up their bills primarily to $988 billion. That acknowledged that sequester is the new normal. We in the Senate marked up our bill, and the number we used was $1.058 trillion. The number I used came from the Senate-passed budget bill under the chairmanship of Senator Patty Murray. So there is a $70 billion difference between the House and the Senate, and that is an honest dispute.

I am ready to negotiate with Congressman Rogers, but I am not ready to capitulate. What does capitulate mean? It means we don't even get to a number because we are fighting about ObamaCare. We should be discussing what is the way to do this. I am willing to see a compromise because my goal is that in December we will pass all of the funding bills, that we would have canceled sequester for 2 years, and we would have formed a compromise on a number that does reduce public debt--we acknowledge that--but that also

makes public investments that create jobs and growth in our country. We would do that through transportation, research and development, and things we can also make and sell overseas. These are the kinds of things we want to invest in--the physical infrastructure and human infrastructure, such as education, research and development. We want to have the kind of approach that is progrowth and a pro-American future. I want to get to that debate. I want to get to that discussion. I want to get to that conference. But I cannot get to it because we are fighting over ObamaCare.

Somehow or another that term is supposed to be kind of a sarcastic thing, to call it ``ObamaCare.'' I think we need to respect the President of the United States. I like calling it the Affordable Care Act. But if people want to call it ObamaCare, let them do it. The President does care. He does care that 42 million people don't have health insurance and that we needed to reform our health care system to get more value for our dollar and get rid of the punitive practices of insurance companies denying people health care on the basis of a preexisting condition and, by the way, as a consumer advocate the Chair knows this, charging women much more for insurance than men are charged of comparable age and health status.

So I come to the floor tonight and I ask my House colleagues--I served in the House--please, let's stop the ideological amendments and get on to what appropriations are supposed to be, what a continuing resolution is supposed to be--a short-term approach. That is why I am recommending November 15, to get us to the point where we have compromise on fiscal matters--how can we end the sequester for 2 years, how can we pass all of our funding bills, and how can we come to a sensible compromise on the $70 billion difference between us.

We have tried everything we know. Senator Murray worked very hard to pass the budget bill. We passed it in a marathon session, and I was proud of us. We worked hard. We had great debate. It was heartfelt and hard fought. But in the end, we had over 70 votes. Then Senator Murray did what the law requires. She said she wanted to go to conference, along with her vice chairman and ranking member Senator Sessions. But six Republican Senators objected. So we have yet to be able to even have a conference to get to the overall budget, which is about what our tax policy should be, our approach to mandatory spending, and a target number for me to reach with my appropriations members on both sides of the aisle.

We never got to that. So we marked up our bills in appropriations. We followed the guidelines given to us by the Senate bill at $1.058 trillion. We have been in frequent conversation--frequent conversation--with Congressman Rogers and Congresswoman Lowey. That is the way Senator Shelby and I work. We also have had frequent conversations. But we are talking to ourselves.

So now I am talking to the American people. I think they want an orderly process. The Founders of our country said we would not be a government of personalities and plebiscites and wins and whims. We would be a government of institutions and laws and a process within our parliamentary form of government for resolving disputes.

Let us get back to regular order. Let us pass a simple straightforward continuing resolution to keep the government open until November 15, with the direction that we end sequester, come up with a compromise on the funding, and, at the same time, be able to pass all of our bills. I think we can do it. I think there is the will. I think there is the wallet. We just need to find the way. The way for the House is to give us a plain straightforward bill. Let us pass it over here. Let us keep America open and let us keep America running.

I yield the floor.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Madam President, as you know, we are only 2 hours now from a shutdown. I am sure those who are mesmerized by our behavior saw a group of Senators on the floor who looked like they were smiling and enjoying themselves. Let me tell the Presiding Officer what was going on.

Senators were actually having a conversation. We were talking about is there a possibility of a compromise. What you saw there is what I hope eventually would become a committee of 100, people actually thinking what could get us to a situation where we could begin to focus on the fiscal problems of the United States. There is a difference between the House appropriations bill and the Senate bill. I chair that committee. So there is a difference with us. But what I want people to see is that there are good people on both sides of the aisle who would like to get something done.

The first thing we would like to get done tonight is not to have a government shutdown and to lay the groundwork for a continuing funding resolution that would be short term, that would enable us to come up with a compromise on discretionary spending, where we could reduce our public debt, fund our government at a smart, frugal level, and also do it in the way that promotes growth. This is what I think the mood of many in the Senate is. I think it is the mood on the majority of both sides of the aisle.

So what do we need from our friends in the House? We do not need one more politically provocative, veto-bait rider on the funding resolution. The Senate passed a bill that essentially laid out a framework exactly for what I said, a continuing resolution to November 15, and a fiscal level that is their level now. We want to negotiate up. I certainly do.

If they would just take up the Senate bill which is neat, clean, clear, and gets us moving forward, we could be able to do this. So we were not just ha-ha-ha'ing over there. There is nothing here tonight to ha-ha-ha about. But there is a mood on both sides of the aisle to stop the shutdown, stop the shutdown and stop the slamdown. Let's be able to pass something tonight that gets us to a way that we can keep the government open, keep our processors functioning for compromise and negotiation and be able to get the job done.

I think it would be an outstanding achievement. I believe the mood is here. I said it earlier. I think there is the will. I even think there is the wallet. Please, if the House cooperates, we would even have a way forward.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I chair the Senate Appropriations Committee. It is a great honor. I am the one that would go to conference. Hey, I'm ready. However, a motion to tell us to meet in conference without a continuing funding resolution to keep the government open is a hollow gesture and a cynical gesture and a manipulative gesture. To say ``have a conference,'' that means, myself, my Republican vice chairman, other conferees that would be appointed, we would sit down with the House conferees. By the way, we talk all the time. We started something new under my leadership, with the concurrence of Senator Shelby, talking with the House. Do we want to meet in a conference? You bet. But to meet in a conference without the continuing funding resolution included in it means that the government shuts down at midnight without a continuing funding resolution to a date certain.

You can tell us to meet all you want, but the government will shut down. My whole point is to agree with my colleagues here that the House should take up what the Senate sent them. The Senate sent, in a gesture of comity and so on, a simple continuing resolution. Keep the government funded until November 15. This would give us opportunities to have that conference. We accepted their funding level, planning to negotiate a higher level. We had been waiting and waiting for Senator Murray to be able to go to conference on the budget so that we could arrive at this.

People might say: Senator Mikulski, I'm confused. Murray is the budget. You are appropriations. Are they not the same thing?

No. Senator Murray is the Budget Committee. That is the full revenue. That is the full Federal budget. It includes discretionary spending. I am one part of that. It includes mandatory

spending. That is Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, other mandatory spending. It also includes revenue which means that your books ultimately balance and you have a balance in your economy.

The Budget Committee's job is to arrive at that, working with the House. They then give us, the appropriators, something called a 302(a). It is a section in the Budget Act. That Budget Committee tells us, the appropriators, the cap that we can spend. The appropriators are neither free spenders nor freeloaders. We get a cap, a 302(a).

I have 12 subcommittees. Those 12 subcommittees, we divide them up in terms of what we think are the important investments that the country should make; that is into the 12 committees. Then they work with their Republican members to arrive at the subcommittees, and we bring them to the floor.

I have not had a top line. I have not had my cap, because she cannot go to conference. Remember those conferences everybody likes to have? So, had Senator Murray gone to a conference we would have had that number. But in the absence of that, I did something really bold. I took the Senate for its word.

This spring when the Budget Committee passed their 302(a) allocation, it would have been $1.058 trillion. That is how we Senate appropriators, we Democrats, marked up our 12 bills. Some might say that is a lot of money. It sure is a lot of money, and we did a good job with it. We had smart public investments and every one of my subcommittees had the inspector general at their hearings so we could identify duplicative, dated or dysfunctional programs.

We are ready to cut. We know how to cut. We are ready to go, and every one of my subcommittees is ready to go. Am I ready to go to conference? You bet. But to go to conference without that continuing funding resolution is, again, a hollow action that once again wastes time and wastes opportunity.

It is not just those in our country who watch C-SPAN. The world watches C-SPAN. The world is watching us. This is the United States of America. They are watching our parliamentary system, which was once the greatest in the world. We have gone from being the greatest deliberative body to the greatest delaying body, and we delay through hollow gestures back and forth.

I want to do everything I can--working on a bipartisan basis--to maintain the greatness of America, but in order to do that, the greatness of America needs to work tonight. We need to come to our senses, come to an agreement, come to closure, and keep the government open. I am happy to go to the conference, but I would like a date certain. My preference is November 16. Keep the government open. Keep us in not only our job but keep America working.

I yield the floor.