Floor Statements

Madam President, I was unable to attend the rollcall vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Patricia Ann Millett, of Virginia, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, since the government shut down about 16 days ago, I have been coming to the floor of the Senate to express my chagrin at this manufactured crisis. Then, of course, the second manufactured crisis, the crisis of perhaps doing the unthinkable: a default, where we would become a nation that did not pay our bills for the first time in our history. I think history is going to analyze this period of time in our Nation's governance and will not look fondly upon what has happened here.

Just this morning, I held a press conference, as I am chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, to talk about what is happening across the country in this shutdown--superfund sites, more than 500 not being cleaned up. We had businesspeople there, small businesspeople who have their businesses near wildlife refuges. This is the season where people go hunting and fishing and spend their dollars to help support the tourist industry in our great Nation. In many States tourism is No. 1, 2, or 3. In my State, California, it is the No. 3 industry. So when a park closes down or the Army Corps recreation land closes down or the refuges close down, this is not just sad because that is not the right thing to do for the environment, it is sad because many people rely on those beautiful areas being open to the public.

We need to keep the doors of the government open to the people. This is a government of, by, and for the people. Our government should never be closed. That does not mean we are going to agree on every law or every regulation or every single thing that happens in government. We are always going to have disagreements.

I have said here quite often, I have served with five Presidents-- three Republican Presidents, two Democratic Presidents. I am a Democrat, and there were many times I did not agree with my President, whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. But I knew there were ways to win the day. You have to stick to your principles and fight the battles and do everything you can to win the moment, to change the law, to change the way a law is enforced, to write a new law, to repeal an old law, but you do it within the framework of governance, not within the framework of chaos. There is never a reason--never a reason--to threaten to close the government. There is never a reason to threaten to default on our debt.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article that just hit now from Business Insider be printed in the Record.

Here is what has happened because of this 16-day shutdown. Here is what has happened because that shutdown was paired with a flirtation with a default.

The S&P has cut the annualized U.S. growth view closer to

2% from 3%. . . .

That is a percentage point off growth. This is what Bloomberg is reporting.

The ratings agency--which recognizes the Senate deal will

be approved--

So this is after they recognize the deal will be approved. And thank God it looks as though it will be.

says that the shutdown has taken--

Mr. President, hear this:

$24 billion out of the economy and cut 0.6% off of yearly

fourth quarter GDP growth.

This is what is so important, and I hope everyone within the sound of my voice hears this:

``If people are afraid that the government policy

brinksmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of

another shutdown or worse, they'll--

The people will--

remain afraid to open up their checkbooks. That points to

another Humbug holiday season,'' S&P wrote in a release.

They also said the impact of the debt ceiling is getting

worse by the day for the U.S. economy.

There is a full release, and I have put that in the Record.

To speak in layman's terms, what the economists are saying is this shutdown and this flirtation with a default has taken a huge bite out of our economy--a huge bite. Why did we face it? Because some folks do not like the health care reform act.

It is their total right not to like it. It is their total right not to love it. It is their total right to try and change it. That is all their total right. But you cannot shut down the government and stamp your feet and say: Because I don't like this and I don't like who is President, I am shutting down the government.

Now here is the good news--and it is good news: Bipartisanship here in the Senate is leading America out of this painful, partisan, self- inflicted crisis. As someone from the largest State in the Union, I can tell you, relief does not even begin to describe how I feel. I am also grateful--grateful--to the two leaders who came together, the Democratic leader and the Republican leader of the Senate, both who have had many disagreements and will continue to in the future about the proper road ahead, but when history called them, they were there. They were able to set aside their differences and reach an agreement to open up this government, to pay our bills, and to set out a path to negotiation on all those differences that we know we have between the two parties--very legitimate differences.

I think what we learned, as we read the S&P comments here, is that this has to end, this brinkmanship has to end. We have to say as Americans: You do not have to shut the government down. You do not have to threaten to default. That is not the way we should proceed. It is too painful for this Nation. It is too costly. Mr. President, $24 billion--that is what S&P puts on it. That is what is taken out of the economy. That does not even include what it costs us as a Federal Government to shut down, to reopen, to start again. But bipartisanship here in the Senate is leading the way forward.

We always are told: If you do not know history, you are doomed to repeat it. That is the reason why I have tried--and many others have on, frankly, both sides--to come down here and talk about the mess we have been in.

I would like to say if you are walking down the street and it is a pretty nice day, and you feel good, and the Sun is a little bit behind the clouds but looks as if it is going to come out, you have a few problems at work you have to work on, you have a couple of kids you are worried about, you are thinking about how you are going to go on that next vacation, but you feel pretty good and optimistic--you have problems but everything is manageable--why would you hit yourself in the head with a brick at that very moment? That is really what this self-inflicted wound on our Nation has been about.

Yes, we have our problems. Yes, we are coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Yes, we have to deal with deficits, debts, with education, with the environment, with climate change. We can go on and on. Yes, America has its issues. Of course, we have. But we do not need self-inflicted wounds. We have enough issues that are critical, including world peace and Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's chemical weapons. I serve on the Foreign Relations Committee. Everything has taken a back seat to this situation.

Now I am very happy. I learned that the House is planning--assuming this all goes well tonight and everybody votes to open up this government and pay our bills--that the House is going to take up the Water Resources Development Act next week. That is a bill that passed here by more than 80 votes. It is critical. It addresses flood control. It addresses dredging of our ports. It has a recreation piece. It has a lot of important policy in it to help move our Nation forward. Most important, 500,000 jobs depend on our passing WRDA.

So from what I have read, that WRDA bill is going to come forward, and I am very pleased. Then we will take our bills to conference. That is the way we do things here.

We resolve our differences in a conference. I feel Chairman Shuster and I can do that with our colleagues. We will have a vote on something that creates jobs and moves us forward. In the meantime, we have been mired for 2 weeks in a government shutdown and a frightening inching up to the default date. It has taken the wind out of our sails, the winds out of America's sails. It has taken our energy. All of us are very, shall I say, we are still even a little anxious until this is done.

It has been a couple of weeks of anxiety, of great difficulty. Here we are. What about the people out there who have suffered, who have worked without a paycheck--worked without a paycheck--policemen, firemen, all of our workers still working without paychecks.

We are on the verge of correcting that in moments. I can only say I am very thankful to our two leaders. I am very thankful to the bipartisan team. I do not want to start naming names because I am fearful I will forget some.

But I know Senator McCain was part of it, Senator Collins, Senator Donnelly, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Heitkamp. I know I am leaving people out which I did not want to do. I think Senator Johanns was part of the team, Senator Flake, Senator Manchin, Senator Shaheen, Senator Kirk. I am ever so grateful. I just thought of Senators Ayotte and Murkowski. I think that may cover it--Senator King--doing this by memory. They got together when things looked grim. They said the Senate is going to lead. I am so grateful to them because even as things faltered, they were still at it, still working.

Senator Pryor was part of that group. They did not give up. To me, that is so important. We need to talk to each other. We need to work together. How did we get 80-some votes for a WRDA bill? It was bipartisan. How did we get all of those votes we had last time for the highway bill? It was bipartisan. We worked hard. As chairman of that EPW Committee, the things we get done are all bipartisan.

When we get into our corners it is not good. When we try to use as leverage the very government itself or the debt ceiling itself, it does not work. In closing, I am going to say again what this article says from S&P:

If people are afraid that the government policy

brinkmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of

another shut down or worse, they'll remain afraid to open up

their checkbooks. That points to another Humbug holiday

season.

Meaning the Christmas season, which is so critical to our economy. We need to learn from this sad history of the last few weeks; that, yes, we will have our disagreements. That is the greatness of our Nation; that we do have the freedom of thought, we do have different political parties, we do have different ways of looking at issues. It is fine, but do not ever shut down the government, do not ever play games with the full faith and credit of America. Let's get to the negotiating table and we will be just fine. We will work out those differences.

The last thought is elections have consequences. This is where we battle it out. In the next one we are going to battle this out. That is important. We never said it would be smooth sailing, but we have to keep the government open and we have to pay our bills. I hope that is what we learned.

I am looking forward to the next hour and a half or so. Maybe we will be voting a little sooner. I thank the Presiding Officer for his leadership in all of this darkness of time.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use as much time as I might consume.

Madam President, the Senator from South Dakota has pointed out how concerned he is about jobs and economic growth. He is concerned about our not doing enough appropriations bills. He is concerned that we have not resolved our differences in the conference.

I want him to know, since he asked for bipartisanship, that as a Democrat, I am concerned about pay and jobs and economic growth. I am concerned that we have not had any appropriations bills. I am concerned that we have not gone to the budget. But I need to speak the truth, and the truth is in the record.

Why don't we have appropriations bills? Because the Republicans filibustered our very first bill, and when we tried to get it done, they would not give us the votes, so it was taken off the floor. Senator Murray and Senator Collins--our moderate Republican colleague-- were very upset about that. The Republicans filibustered the very first appropriations bill we tried to get through, and it was clear they were going to continue to filibuster each one. So to come down here and lament the fact that we didn't take up appropriations bills flies in the face of recent history.

My friend laments the fact that we have not had a chance to discuss what he now sees as a target for cuts in Medicare and Social Security. He calls them entitlement programs. That is their new thing now. They want to cut those programs. Well, you know what. We have said open the government, let's pay our bills, and we will negotiate, listen, and talk.

Our friends on the Republican side stopped us from going to a budget conference 21 times, and now they have

shut down the government. All you have to do is understand why. They were very clear. They don't like the Affordable Care Act.

I have come to the floor, as I have before during this government shutdown that is in its 15th day, to raise the alarm about the harmful, terrible, hurtful impacts on America and its people as a result of 15 days of not having access to their government. Who are they punishing? The people of this Nation. This is their government. Open the door and let them in. Let them talk to us. Let them tell us about the legislation they want us to proceed to. Let them not suffer, as they are in my State and in many States because the government is shut down. In a moment, I will talk about some of the ways my people are hurting.

They shut down the government because they didn't like the Affordable Care Act. I am so happy to say that Covered California-dot-com-- coveredCA.com, which is our Web site--has had more than 1.5 million unique visits to the site. The call volume to the service center is 104,000-plus. The average call wait time is now 1 minute 55 seconds. The average call-handling time from the time you get on until the time you get off and get your questions answered is less than 15 minutes. Our cumulative applications are approaching 100,000. Tens of thousands have already completed the signups. This is why they shut down the government. They don't want that to move forward.

I will tell some stories about health care reform in my State.

Rakesh Rikhi of San Jose is now paying $950 a month to insure himself, his wife, and his two children with Kaiser Permanente. According to the NBC station in the Bay area, Rakesh was stunned to learn that through Covered California he can get a similar Kaiser plan for his family for $400 less a month. So when my friend stands here and says premiums are going up, ask Rakesh. He is getting a plan for his family for $400 less a month. He quickly did the math, and when he hung up the phone and signed up, he found out he is saving $5,000 a year.

Why do the Republicans want to shut down the government and stop somebody like that from getting a plan? I think they have to look into their hearts.

Rakesh owns an auto repair shop. He has four employees. He is hoping that with the savings he will be able to offer his workers medical insurance. He cannot wait to sign up and complete the application. He looks forward to feeling relief from the financial pain of skyrocketing insurance costs.

Then there is Laura Hunt of Modesto. She lost her husband's employer- based coverage when he was killed in a car crash in 2006. She is suffering from income loss and the painful loss of a spouse. She contacted Covered California and found out she could have an Anthem Blue Cross policy for a net cost of $23 a month. Why do my friends on the other side of the aisle want to stop Laura Hunt of Modesto, who lost her husband's employer-based coverage when he was killed in a car crash, stop her from getting affordable health care?

Kevin Burke, an assembly worker, told the Fresno Bee he had been out of work for 2 years and now he qualifies for Medicaid and he is going to be OK, and he is not going to wait until he is rushed to an emergency room. Why do my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to stop Kevin Burke of Fresno from getting affordable health insurance? They need to look into their hearts.

Then there is Rufina Arango, a diabetic. At Vista Family Health Center she filled out an application for coverage through a significant expansion of Medi-Cal. Rufina and her family lost their health insurance several years ago when her husband was laid off after working for 22 years. She said:

It's so great. It's going to help so many of us. If not for

ObamaCare, many of us would not qualify for health insurance.

I could go on and on with these stories. I don't have the time to do it. But I am going to keep on adding these stories to the Congressional Record so some day, when people look back at this moment in history, they will realize that when we stood for the people and their right to have affordable health care, that we did it for a very good reason. Some day in the future people will say: You mean there was a time when we had 40 million people without insurance? Are you kidding? But that is the moment we are in now. We are either going to stand sentry, as my friend Barbara Mikulski always says, for a law that is going to help people, or just walk away. No law is perfect. Of course there are glitches and issues. We are very happy to talk about making it better-- very happy. The President is as well. He said as much.

I want everyone to read an opinion piece that ran in the Washington Post recently, a couple of days ago, by one of my constituents. Her name is Janine. Janine Urbaniak Reid is a writer, and so she has a beautiful way of expressing herself. She talks about her loving son, Mason, who has brain cancer and who has had to undergo multiple surgeries. Listen to this:

He would have hit his lifetime limit on the policy and the

family would have been driven into--

her words--

the financial abyss if it wasn't for the Affordable Care Act.

She writes that the family:

Thanks God and whoever else would listen for our good

fortune to have coverage.

She ends her piece with this line:

If I could get those who are trying to repeal this law on a

conference call, I would explain this to them. I would tell

them that while they were busy trying to derail the

Affordable Care Act over the past 2 years, Mason has again

learned to walk, talk, eat, and shoot a 3-point basket.

Why would anyone want to hurt that family and reverse our law, the Affordable Care Act, which is everybody's law, that says no more lifetime limits and no more annual limits. We have to ask the Republicans why they want to do it. They come to the floor and they say: Health care costs are rising; these things are happening; the sky is falling. But then we look at the facts, and the facts are that tens of thousands of people are signing up. Young people are now able to stay on their parents' policies until they are 26. There is no more preexisting condition bar. If a person has a preexisting condition, they can still get insurance. There are so many good things. Women are no longer discriminated against. We used to pay twice as much as men. Being a woman was considered a preexisting condition. Can my colleagues imagine. Really? Because, yes, we can have babies and, yes, we had certain needs. Well, that is over now. We have equal rights in this Affordable Care Act.

So the reason for the shutting down of the government was to stop the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is now signing up tens of thousands of people. It is saving a lot of our families. If the Republicans want to make improvements in it, that is fine. We are ready to do it. We will sit down with anyone and make this law better-- absolutely. But don't stop a law that passed almost 4 years ago and that was upheld by the Supreme Court; and, may I say, there was a big election about it.

Remember what Mitt Romney said:

The first thing I will do when I am your President is to

repeal ObamaCare. That is my promise.

And, boy, I believed him. It was a big issue. People decided that wasn't a good enough reason, and they reelected our President not in a small way but in a big way.

So since there is no more reason to shut down the government because the Affordable Care Act can't be stopped--it is funded by a separate stream of funding, not appropriations--we begged the Republicans: Don't shut the government down over this. It is starting. It is happening. We are not going to repeal a law that took--I would say decades--to pass.

So they didn't listen. Now they have stopped talking about the Affordable Care Act, pretty much. Now they have a whole different reason for shutting down the government and bringing us to the brink of default, and that reason is deficits--deficits.

I want to speak a little bit about default because we are hours away from a default--the first time in this Nation's great history. If we don't take action, we will be unable to pay the bills that have been incurred in the past.

It is important to note that we have gone through so many crises in our Nation--tough, tough, tough ones, including civil strife, world wars, the Great Depression. We always followed the Constitution that says, ``The validity

of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, shall not be questioned.'' This is in the Constitution. Yet from the people who say they are constitutionalists, they seem not to read that part, and they are flirting, for the first time, with allowing us to get to the point where we can't pay all of our bills. That is a default.

Some of our colleagues come to the floor, and they say that it is not a default if we pay interest on the bonds. I am an old economics major, but I don't pretend to know everything about economics. But I can tell my colleagues this: The definition of a default in Black's Law Dictionary is ``the failure to make a payment when due.'' It doesn't say the failure to make an interest payment when due. It says, the failure to make a payment. That means to our contractors. That means to our workers. That means to our Social Security recipients. That means to our Medicare recipients.

I have never seen such creative license taken when it comes to the default. A party that says it is fiscally conservative and then says it is not a default when we don't pay our bills as long as we pay China the interest we owe them? They have to be kidding. Take that to a town hall meeting, I say to my friend who represents so many wonderful seniors in the great State of Florida, Senator Nelson, who is on the floor. So we have never gotten to this point.

Yes, I am delighted to yield.

Yes. I can yield for as much time as my colleague wants.

I wish to thank my friend, and I hope we can continue to have these conversations. I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing my friend so he could make his point.

We are, as leader Pelosi said, playing with fire. We are playing with lives.

One of our colleagues, Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, read the most amazing letter he got from a constituent and he said:

She is so worried about her parents. They are in their 80s,

and the fear--just the thought--of maybe not getting a check

on time, that is making her parents physically ill.

Why are we doing this? There is no reason to do this. This is a self- inflicted wound. The government shutdown is self-inflicted. Playing with the full faith and credit of the United States of America is a self-inflicted wound.

Here is the thing: We know one of the heroes of the Republican Party and a hero to many Democrats is Ronald Reagan. Let's see what he said. I have it here. When it comes to the debt:

The full consequences of a default, or even the serious

prospect of a default, are impossible to predict and awesome

to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of

the United States would have substantial effects on the

domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in

exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a

result.

That is Ronald Reagan. I was here during most of his presidency. I was over in the House. I think my friend from Florida was as well. Lord knows, we didn't agree with Ronald Reagan on everything. We agreed with him on some things, not all things, and we may have cast a vote or two to say that we object. But no one ever brought down the full faith and credit of the United States. He got 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency--18 over 8 years.

So there are two paths we can take. One path is a road that is a little bit bumpy and curvy and dusty, but at the end of the day it gets us where we want to go: Into a budget conference with our bills paid and our government open to the people. That is the bipartisan road. It is not easy.

I am so proud of Senators Reid and McConnell for working on a plan that is something we can accept. No one on either side is thrilled about it, but we can accept it. It gets us out of this mess. That is the road we should take, the bipartisan road that gets us into the conference, that opens the doors of government, and pays our bills.

The other road is the road the House Republicans are taking. That road is straight over the cliff. That is the partisan road, and we will dive down. We are not going to get there that way. We are going to bring a world of hurt on the people.

What did the people do to deserve this? They did not vote the way my Republican friends in the House wanted them to. Sorry, that is what elections are about. I have been disappointed in election outcomes, believe me, more times than I care to admit. That is what elections are about.

Well, once you get here, you have to work across party lines, and even though that road is bumpy and dusty and twisty and windy, and all the rest of it, that is the road that gets us where we have to go. That is the road Leaders Reid and McConnell had us on until a few hours ago when all of a sudden that road kind of shut down and the other road-- that partisan road--opened right up. I do not know why they are taking us down that road leading us off a cliff, with all the pain and suffering and job loss and economic chaos that awaits if we go down that road. But I honestly think we can get back on that bipartisan path. I do not know exactly how it will come about. How a bill becomes law is sometimes very complicated, but if the House sends us something, but we can work to make it bipartisan, we will be over this. We will be over this. We cannot have a strictly partisan political bill.

I want to share with the Presiding Officer and with my colleagues the fact that Fitch, a credit rating service, has put our creditworthiness ``under review for a downgrade,'' according to the Associated Press. It means that America's AAA rating is in doubt. Let me say that again. Fitch, a credit rating service, put our creditworthiness ``under review for a downgrade,'' reports the Associated Press, putting America's AAA rating in doubt.

Just this afternoon, after the bipartisan plan was stalled here in the Senate and the House went forward with their partisan plan.

What Fitch did is a warning sign. It is a warning sign for businesses in terms of their borrowing costs to expand. It is a warning sign to the job market if there is a lack of expansion by the business community. It is a warning sign that students could be paying higher interest rates to go to college. It is a warning sign for homeowners who could be paying higher rates for their mortgages.

What is going on? We are just getting out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. The Presiding Officer is in the Senate because she fought so hard to get this economy on track, and people in her State said: That is what we need, and she came here. And now this self-inflicted wound just as we are coming out of it, just as we are starting to see progress? Why are we doing this?

I want to talk a little bit about the bill the House is probably going to be voting on soon because it deals with a couple of things that are very problematic. I have already said it is a partisan bill. Speaker Boehner did not have a conversation with Leader Pelosi. He just wrote the bill with Republicans only, as opposed to Harry Reid, who wrote our compromise with the Republicans, taking us down that bipartisan road.

My understanding is the House bill does something that is inexplicable to me and many others, both Republicans and Democrats. Listen to this. It says that no President--starting now with this President, and into the future--no President can take steps to avoid default. I do not get it. We all know a default is chaos. Everyone agrees it is terrible, it is bad. Republican and Democratic administrations for decades have taken measures when there is a little stall here or there and they need a few days to move around a bill or two.

I cannot believe it--from a party that said: In case we default, we should prioritize who we pay--they will not allow future administrations to avoid a default and add a couple of days until we face that.

Listen to what Tony Fratto said. He worked in the Bush administration as Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs for Treasury. He said the following:

Restricting Treasury's use of extraordinary measures is

like restricting the fire department's use of hoses.

So imagine if you said to a fire department: You can use every tool at your disposal, but you can't use a water hose to put out a fire. They are saying to the Treasury Department: You have to default even if there is an easy way to avoid it for a few days.

What are they thinking? Do they want this administration and others to have an easier path to default? I thought we would all agree we certainly do not ever want to default but certainly give the ability of an administration--Democratic or Republican--to avert a default, if they can. Their language makes no sense.

Then their other rider they have on there--it is my understanding; I could be wrong, but this is what I get from reading what their legislation, I think, is going to be--the other one involves treating congressional employees differently than any other employee in the country who works for a large employer by taking away the employer contribution that these workers have had for more than 50 years.

I do not get it. Why do Republicans want to punish the people who work so hard for them and work so hard for our country? What are they thinking? Why do they want to treat people differently than all other workers who work for large employers?

Honest to God, I do not get it. I do not get it. If they do not like the people who work for them, then get somebody else. But do not punish your staff, who work day and night. And I want to say, my staff and the Presiding Officer's who are working are working without a paycheck. Well, this is a lovely thing to say to these workers, some of whom earn very little: You are going to be the only people in the country now who cannot get an employer contribution. I do not get it. I really do not.

So here we are: a government shutdown because the Republicans will not accept the fact that a law passed 4 years ago that they do not like, that the Supreme Court upheld--and they did not like that--there was an election over it--and they did not like that--so they stamped their feet and said: We are shutting down the government.

And is there ever pain. I have communities in Los Angeles, one particular one where kids are getting nosebleeds. They are sick. They live near an industrial site, and the Environmental Protection Agency was about to find out what the problem was when they shut down. And those kids do not have an answer.

I had a plane crash at a small airport in Santa Monica that killed four people. We do not know why it happened, but there is no investigation. It had to stop midstream.

I do not have any inspectors on the ground inspecting clean air, clean water, safe drinking water. There are 505 superfund sites where cleanup has been suspended. I know the Presiding Officer has some in her State. These sites are toxic brews. They have arsenic. They have benzene. They have chlorine. They have everything in them that is bad for people to breathe. It is bad if it gets in the drinking water. No inspectors on the ground and no cleanup at 505 superfund sites.

Remember Fukushima? I think everyone knows what Fukushima is. Well, now 92 percent of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff have been furloughed. They have one mission, and I am quoting from their mission: ``to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials.''

The Army Corps manages 12 million acres of public lands. They host 370 million visitors annually. This is just the time of year when people still--just before we get to winter--can go out there and enjoy the recreation. No. They are closed.

And just think about the mom-and-pop shops that exist around our parks, our Army Corps land, our wildlife refuges. Madam President, 561 refuges--they are all closed because of the shutdown. Hunting season is in full swing.

I already talked about the fact that the National Transportation Safety Board furloughed 380 of its 400 employees, and they have suspended all their pending investigations. I talked about that.

There is another crash they were investigating in San Francisco, the Asiana Airlines Flight 214. I will tell you, when you stop an investigation like that, it is hard to get right back to it. The problem is, it takes you longer to find the cause of the crash. A lot of times these crashes have clues in them that there may be a part in a certain type of plane that is defective, there may be a problem on the runway--something wrong.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission--another watchdog. In San Diego last week, a 2-year-old child, Annette Estrada, was killed. She was crushed by a falling TV. So they cannot investigate this incident, and maybe some other kids are going to suffer that. It might have been a very defective design.

What does the House do? They are governing by press release: Well, we will open this little sliver of an agency and that one. That is not how you run the greatest Nation on Earth.

Open the government. You said you shut it down because of ObamaCare. ObamaCare is going forward. You want to fix some parts of it. We are ready to talk. There are no winners in this shutdown. It is devastating for our workers. Do you know there are more contract employees than there are Federal employees? There are. Even if you take away the military Federal contract employees--and we hope they are getting paid; we are not positive that all are, but let's say they are--there are more than 2 million contract employees who do not know when the next paycheck is coming.

We sent a bill over to Speaker Boehner in the House. Open the government. Just open it. Then we will negotiate all the issues you want to talk about. He would not even allow a vote on that.

We are in a bad place. I have to say, I have lived long enough to know that life does deal us some terrible blows. We know that, each of us. We have each had our tragedies, our challenges, whether they are health challenges or financial challenges or all kinds of challenges. We have enough of those without a self-inflicted wound--two: a government shutdown over here, and a pending default over here, totally unnecessary. It could end in 5 minutes, but still the angst continues, still the anxiety continues, still the uncertainty continues.

I will close with a hopeful note. I laid out the two paths we have: the partisan path to a cliff or the windy, difficult bipartisan path, which the Senate was on until we were pulled off it. I hope and pray that we will get back on that bipartisan path, that we will reopen this government, that we will pay our bills, and this great Nation--this great Nation--can get back to doing what we do best: making sure this American dream is there for everybody, making sure we care about our people, making sure they have access to their government, and getting us out of this morass we are in for no good reason.

We can do it. The path is there. Let's hope we take that path.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, we now find ourselves, amazingly, in day 14 of a government shutdown--a shutdown that was brought to us by the Republicans in the House. They are sitting on a bill we sent them to open the government and they refuse to take it up.

My colleague, the Senator from Connecticut, served over there and I served over there, and we always had an opportunity to use the rules in some way

to get a vote on a bill that was passed by the Senate. But the House, not wanting to have such a vote, has made it pretty much impossible for our colleagues over there, Democrats and moderate Republicans, to actually vote to keep this government open.

I listened very carefully to Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell, and I have hopes, as I expressed them yesterday, that we will be able to reach an agreement both on the shutdown and on the debt ceiling. But the fact we are struggling, the fact that people all over the world are looking at us as if we are some kind of dysfunctional country, the fact that we have about 1 million Federal employees not getting their checks, not knowing where the next meal is going to come from, the fact we have more than 2 million workers who work for private-sector contractors who don't know when or how they are going to get paid, is something we should all take note of, and we should listen to those who say this is ridiculous. This is self-inflicted.

You know, it reminds me of getting up and walking out of your house on a beautiful day. You are walking down the street, and, yes, you have a few problems on your mind--life isn't perfect--but you are pretty optimistic; things are pretty good. Suddenly, you pick up a stone from the ground and bash yourself in the head. Honest to God, that is what they have done, these Republicans. They have bashed in the heads of the American public on a beautiful day as we are coming out of a recession, when we know we have our problems, but we also know we can solve them. It doesn't make sense.

Then, as if that isn't enough, they have another stone in their hand called default. So maybe as you are beginning to see the light of day, you hit yourself again and say to the world: America could actually default on its debts, and the full faith and credit of the United States is in question.

Robert C. Byrd, one of the great Senators and historians, always tells us to read the Constitution. In my desk I have a couple of copies, and every once in a while I will look at it. I am not quoting verbatim, but it says the debts of the United States shall not be questioned. Nobody has the right to play with that. Yet we are doing it again because the Republicans are angry. Why are they angry? I believe it is because they lost the Presidential election. I believe it is because they didn't take back the Senate. This is a direct quote from John Boehner. He said the American people don't want to shut down the government, but they also don't want ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act. That was his opinion. That is not the truth. The American people don't want to see us shut down the government and threaten default because of a bill that passed almost 4 years ago, a bill that was upheld by the Supreme Court and a law that was heavily debated in the Presidential election. The person who said this--Mitt Romney: On day one, I will repeal ObamaCare--lost the election.

I have been around here a while. I have served with five Presidents, three of whom were Republicans. Lord knows I didn't agree with everything the Republican Presidents wanted, and I didn't even agree with everything the Democratic Presidents wanted. I fought hard and I got annoyed and I worked in elections. I never saw Republicans or Democrats, until today, to be willing to default. Newt Gingrich did lead us to a government shutdown in the 1990s, but we haven't had one since then because it was so painful and awful. I know the grownups are now trying to resolve this. I know our leaders are going to the White House, and hopefully, they will come to an agreement. But the fact that it would take us this long, 3 days before a default and the 14th day of a shutdown, is unbelievable.

A teacher knows the rules when they get a job. They know school starts at 9 a.m., and they dismiss the kids at 3:00. If a teacher says, I don't like the start time and I am coming 2 hours later, they can't have this job because they know they have to show up. The equivalent of that is keeping the doors of government open to the people we represent, not slamming them shut in their face. That is what we have to do when we show up here; that is to keep the government going. Do we have disagreements across and even within parties? Of course we do. But we have a procedure to deal with that. It is called legislating. That is what we do when we have disagreements. It is something called debate--debate the issues, battle them out, have a vote, and pass a bill. The other Chamber does the same. Then the House and the Senate go to a conference committee and argue out the differences. You send that bill to the President--whoever he or she may be--and the President either signs the bill or vetoes it. And if they sign it, it is a law. If they veto it, we have an override. I have been involved in those. But once the bill becomes a law, it is the law, and you carry it out. You don't decide what laws you want to enforce and what laws you don't. That is not the right way. Our founders said: We are a government of laws, not men. Carry out the law. If you don't like the law, try to change it.

Now, the Republicans didn't like the Affordable Care Act--which, by the way, is signing up thousands of people a day as we stand here. In my home State, it has signed up by now tens of thousands, and we have had about 750,000 at least unique visitors to our site. In Kentucky, they are signing up 1,000 a day. Unbelievable, never expected. This is the law that caused the government shutdown. The Republicans stamp their feet. They didn't like it. They didn't care that there was an election about it--none of that. They didn't like it, so they are going to shut down the government.

Now we don't even hear them talking about it. Now they are talking about wanting to cut Medicaid and Social Security and Medicare. That is the new thing they want to do. Paul Ryan: Let's just forget this one. I guess we can't do anything about it. But let's now cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We have a process to get to conference with the House. On the Budget Committee we have a strong chairman, Patty Murray. She has asked now 21 times to take our budget to conference. Ted Cruz and his friends have objected, and then they have the nerve to say we won't negotiate. We want to negotiate in a conference committee. That is why there is a conference committee. They have stopped it.

The House has decided now. It is too late. We can't do anything about the Affordable Care Act. Then why don't they open up the government? They shut it down. They now admit they can't do anything about it. It has a steady stream of funding, it is beginning to work, and people are going to think: Why do you want to take away the rights I have now, having a preexisting condition, to get health care? Why do you want to stop my child who can now stay on my health care until he is 26 and take away benefits like free trips to the doctor to get immunizations and birth control and health care? They tried to stop women's health care. They gave that up. They tried to stop us from getting cancer screenings, and we said forget it. So they are all over the place.

I have lived long enough to know when I see people who are joyless, unhappy, and angry. That doesn't make for an optimistic country. They have the privilege of being here, even if they are only controlling one branch of the three, the House. It is the White House; the Senate, Democrats; the House, Republicans. They have a privilege, and they have a lot of leverage, but the way they are behaving is unacceptable. As I said, it is a self-inflicted wound.

I never questioned the fact that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents love this country. I never question it. But I have to say, when you start acting like you are committing domestic abuse you have a problem. I love you, dear, but I am shutting down your entire government. I love you, dear, but I am going to default, and you are going to be weak. Something is dreadfully wrong.

I see my colleague from Maryland here. I know Maryland is suffering mightily from this shutdown. He and I both have a lot of Federal employees, but the size of our States are different. As a percentage of the workforce, Maryland and Virginia are really suffering. In California we have tens of thousands of workers furloughed, not getting their pay, and a lot of contractors.

I say to my friend from Maryland, I was trying to figure out how many contractor employees are also impacted.

Even taking away military contractors, because some of them are getting paid and some of them aren't. If you take that all out of the equation, there are still more than 2 million workers in the private sector who are working for Federal contractors.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the Baltimore Sun.

I so appreciate my friend, through the Chair, interjecting his thoughts. I have listened to him and to Senator Mikulski throughout this ordeal. The Senator is right. I have been on the floor quite a lot. The reason is clear. We need to make a record so that this never, ever happens again.

There is a reason we had not had a shutdown since the last one when Newt Gingrich and Republicans brought it to us in the 1990s--because it was horrible. They got hurt by it.

We begged them not to go down this road. They went down the road. Why? Because they didn't like the fact that there is an Affordable Care Act. They didn't like it, so they stamped their foot and said: We are shutting down the government because we don't like it. We begged them. We said: That is not going to help your cause. This Affordable Care Act--85 percent of the funds do not come from appropriated funds; they come from a separate stream of funding, and the bill and the law are going forward. They would not listen. Now they have changed their tune and decided it is about cutting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. That is their new thing.

My friend is right. It would be so easy to end this. Open the Government, pay our bills, get to the budget negotiations, where we will have Senator Murray, Senator Sessions, Paul Ryan, and his counterpart begin regular order.

I want to continue about this contractor employee. What he said is so moving--actually, I think it is a she.

She says:

As a technical writer and communications specialist for a

small company . . . my fate was sealed long before early

media reports warned of many more impending furloughs. When

you are sent home from work for over a week, you begin to

notice certain things around you that could cause you to lose

heart. In my own neighborhood--

I say to Senator Cardin, she is talking about your city of Baltimore.

This contractor writes:

in my own neighborhood, I have noticed several cars parked in

their driveways--cars that never leave in the morning for

work and never leave in the evening for a night on the town.

The Metro parking garages are empty.

The Senator alluded to that.

People's morale is diminishing as cabin fever sets in on

all sides. And as rumors of the shutdown continuing until the

17th spread like wildfire in a windstorm, my colleagues and I

seem to have exhausted every resource.

She says:

Unfortunately, like everyone else, there are many of us who

owe student loans and are expected to pay rent. We have to

pay for utilities, credit card bills, dog food and other

necessities like food and clothing. To make matters worse, my

husband and I--

And this is interesting--

had set aside money . . . for a vacation. . . . That money is

now going toward bills. . . . What does all this mean? An

article in The Washington Post recently reported that the

shutdown could amount to a loss of $200 million a day for

local businesses throughout the city.

Mr. President, $200 million a day for local businesses throughout your city of Baltimore.

She says:

Contractors, especially those contractors who work for

small businesses, have been hit hard by this shutdown.

She explains how they may never be made whole.

Day 14 of a shutdown----

Yes, I am happy to yield.

Absolutely.

Through the Chair, I thank my friend. This contractor issue is a sleeper issue in a way, as this woman writes in the Baltimore Sun, because if you look at the numbers, you may see more contractor employees affected than Federal employees because even if you take--there are millions of them. Even if you take away, if you look at the statistics, the millions who work for the military and assume they are getting paid, there are still more than 2 million who are contractors to other arms of the government, such as homeland security or border patrol--you name it. It is a sleeper issue.

This woman who is so articulate, Clarissa Olivarez--I hope she knows we are taking her words to heart and putting her words in the Record. She is explaining what it feels like to be scared. For what? For nothing. Because they did not like the Affordable Care Act--which they are not going to change. They tried to repeal it 43 times.

Open the government. They are so afraid they will lose the vote, they are not even allowing a vote over there.

They are coming back--my friends in the House--shortly. By the way, imagine, Speaker Boehner said go home over the weekend while all this is pending. They were not even in session. Outrageous.

I am going to conclude in about 5 minutes by talking about some of the other impacts of the shutdown.

Mr. President, 93 percent of the employees at the EPA have been furloughed. What do they do? They make sure the air we breathe is safe, the water we drink is safe, and the rivers we swim in are safe. They make sure Superfund sites are being cleaned up, those toxic brews in there, including things such as benzene and arsenic and every other bad thing you can imagine. In my State there is not one single EPA inspector on the ground. I have established that. That is the same in many others. Mr. President, 505 Superfund sites were being cleaned up. Cleanup is suspended. Many children live near those sites. There are many schools near those sites. There are many homes near those sites. They are toxic waste dumps. No cleanup.

Now we find out that 92 percent of workers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been furloughed. What is their job? It was created ``to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials.''

I say to every Senator who has a nuclear powerplant in their State, make a little prayer. If something bad happens, we will have to somehow nab all those workers and get them back on the job in time. Earth to my Republican friends: Have you ever heard the word ``Fukushima''? Do you know what I am talking about? Wake up. What are you doing to the American people? You don't like a bill, so you shut down the government. You take all of the watchdogs off the job so people could start dumping waste into the waterways, into the air?

We even have a circumstance in California where pesticides are being imported from other countries. The EPA has to inspect those at the site and make sure they are safe. There are no inspectors. I just told you that. So they are sitting in a warehouse, and our farmers are starting to say: Where are these pesticides? We need them.

This shutdown is mindless. The Army Corps of Engineers manages 12 million acres of public lands, recreation areas that host 370 million visits annually. These recreation areas support local businesses such as resorts, marinas, outfitters, grocery stores, gas stations, hotels-- shut down. Last week the Corps closed Lake Mendocino, which is located north of San Francisco. Lake Mendocino hosts half a million visitors annually and visitors spend $12 million at businesses within 30 miles of the lake, supporting 106 jobs and $2.8 million in income. Those small businesses cannot go on like this. They cannot go on like this.

Mr. President, 561 national wildlife refuges are closed because of the shutdown. I say to my friend, Senator Cardin and I--we are very close friends because we work together daily on these issues. He is the chairman of the committee that oversees water quality, these wildlife refuges. In many parts of the country, hunting season is in full swing. I say to my friend from Oregon--I just found out, but he probably knows this--that on the California-Oregon border, hunters and tourists usually head to Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge for the opening of hunting season. But they have been denied access, which means local businesses are losing much needed revenues. The impact of this is felt with a direct hit to Federal employees, contractor employees, and local businesses. Everyone is suffering. That is why we had a letter that I put in the Record yesterday, or the day before, signed by the Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the nonprofit sector. It is so rare, I say to my friends, that we see those three groups coming together.

They are demanding that we open the government. They are demanding a clean debt ceiling so we can pay our bills. They are demanding it, and they represent the broadest base sector of America.

Who is benefiting from this other than people who have a very dark side? That is all I can say. You would have to have a really dark side.

I will give a couple of examples of what is happening. The NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board--we had a horrible crash in July with Asiana Airlines, flight 214. We don't know exactly why it happened, and the NTSB has been forced to postpone their hearings. These investigations help us to find out how to avoid disasters in the future.

Three weeks ago in Santa Monica, at a little airport, there was a crash that killed four people. Investigation materials were shoved into a vault, and we don't know why it happened. If we knew why it happened, we could save lives.

I remember when I first came to Congress a very long time ago, and I served in the House, there was a terrible crash. They found out it was a very small bolt or a screw that was responsible for the problems, and they grounded every aircraft that had that faulty part and fixed it. That is why these investigations are critical. These investigations are critical so we are able to not only tell the loved ones what happened but to make improvements. It is all shut down.

Another example has to do with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Last week in San Diego a 2-year-old Annette Estrada was killed when she was crushed by a falling TV. Normally the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigates this heartbreaking incident, find out the problem, and demand it be fixed. Who knows who the next child will be. That is why we have a government--a government of, by, and for the people--to make life better for the American people.

The government is shut down. Open it. Let the people in. It is easy to do. Speaker Boehner has a bill. Let them vote over there. Open the government now. People are in danger. There are no winners in a shutdown. It is devastating for workers. It is devastating for small businesses. It is devastating for contractors. It is devastating to our economy, which is just coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. What are they thinking over there?

Then they send these little mini-bills. Oh, open this little agency, and open that little agency. I call that government by press release. The heat is on them, so they pass a little mini-bill. Since when does one political party decide which of our communities survive, which ones thrive, which ones die, which people live, which people die, which child is healthy, and which child is not healthy?

There is a community in California where kids are suffering nosebleeds, and they are sick. It turns out that they are very close to an industrial site. I called the EPA. They were going to rush over there and figure it out and stop the pain. They can't go. I don't see a bill over there to open the EPA. They will never send us that.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for allowing this interlude. I do want to say to my friend, I think it has been very helpful that he and I have been in this conversation because we share the view that these two self-inflicted wounds are outrageous, and we want to make sure that the Congressional Record is very clear and shows the pain, the suffering, the concern, and the insecurities that this dual wound, the potential of a default and an actual government shutdown, are causing. I pray that we are never facing this again.

I am very mindful of the words I use here on the floor so I am not going to say what I think about this exactly the way I would say it if I were talking to my family. There is no reason for it. It makes no sense to do this to a country they say they love. Why hurt the country they say they love?

Why make the country they say they love look like a laughingstock? Why make a President who was going to go to Asia to pitch our economy and investments in our Nation--why make him cancel a trip and have China stand there and say: Well, you can see America just doesn't have it together. If they loved their country, they wouldn't do that.

Some of the comments over there are unbelievable. One of the Republican House Members said: I have never seen us so happy. She is happy? She is happy that millions of people don't know where their next check is coming from? She is happy? She is happy that plane crashes can't be investigated? She is happy that Superfund sites can't be cleaned? She is happy that veterans are scared? She is happy that 65- year-olds and 62-year-olds who are new to Social Security can't get their checks on time? She is happy? She needs to look into her heart. That whole party has to look into its heart. Every once in a while you can see into someone's soul, and you know it when it has happened to you.

I got into a conversation with one colleague, who shall remain nameless. I was so excited. I came home from California, and I saw tens of thousands of my people who were signing up for health insurance that never had it before. I could tell so many beautiful stories. There were people with preexisting conditions, people who had lifetime caps, people who were scared, and little kids whose parents finally were able to save their lives.

There was one incredible woman who wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post about this. And you know what my colleague, who shall remain nameless, said? I told him I went to a signup place, and it was exciting. There were so many people who were signing up. We were at a Hispanic community, and everybody had a smile on their face. He said: I was happy to read in one of your papers that two people had their premiums doubled. I stopped and said: You were happy? That made you happy? Look into your soul.

Why are people happy over there? How do they say they love their country, but they don't care if their country defaults on its obligations?

I want to show my colleagues what President Ronald Reagan said about defaulting--not paying our bills--President Ronald Reagan, the beloved President of the Republicans, and many Democrats. He came from my State. He is one of the most popular Presidents in the history of our country. We have airports named after him. We have buildings named after him. Why don't we see what President Reagan said about default? And just know, when he was President, Republicans and Democrats raised the debt ceiling no less than 18 times, I say to my colleagues. Eighteen times we raised the debt ceiling because, yes, we had debt from prior bills and Ronald Reagan said, Send me a debt ceiling increase. Here is what he says:

The full consequences of a default--or even the serious

prospect of a default--by the United States are impossible to

predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full

faith and credit of the United States would have substantial

effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of

the dollar.

Ronald Reagan, 1983. That is when our economy was much smaller than it is today.

So how does the party of Ronald Reagan now get us to this place where in 3 days we are about to default? I didn't hear one word out of them when they decided to put two wars on the credit card and a huge tax break for billionaires on the credit card and a big medical prescription drug benefit on the credit card--not one word out of them. Oh, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.

What happened? We had a surplus under Bill Clinton. We had a huge increase in the deficits under George W. Bush. And, by the way, President Obama got handed an enormous deficit which he has cut in half.

So all of this talk about how the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility bears scrutiny. There

wasn't one Republican who voted for the budget, I say to my colleagues, that Bill Clinton wanted us to vote for. We did it all with Democratic votes. Then we got not only a balanced budget, but a surplus, and tens of millions of new jobs. George Bush came in, put two wars on the credit card, prescription drug benefit on the credit card, tax breaks to billionaires on the credit card, and the debt was off and running. But not one Republican said: Don't pass a debt ceiling. Not one Republican said: Don't default. What changed? Could it be they don't like this President? Do my colleagues think that has something to do with it? I will let people decide that.

We now know what Ronald Reagan said. He said, in other words, we need to pay our bills. We need to avoid default. There isn't one respected economist who doesn't agree with what Ronald Reagan said in 1983. The cost to taxpayers of default is enormous--billions upon billions of dollars--even the thought of it. We are still paying off what it cost us the last time.

Experts warn us against default. Warren Buffett: ``It ought to be banned as a weapon.'' It, meaning a default, ought to be banned as a weapon. ``It should be like nuclear bombs, basically too horrible to use.''

Warren Buffett knows a thing or two about this economy.

Mark Zandi, who advised John McCain in his Presidential run: ``Breaching the limit would be an economic disaster.''

What would happen to average folks? Mortgage rates could go sky high. Small business, big business couldn't expand. We would go into a recession. And they are happy over there about the prospect. They need to look into their souls.

The president of the World Bank, Jim Kim: ``Please consider politics beyond the Beltway, politics beyond your districts . . . This is not a theoretical impact. It's very real.''

Again, Mark Zandi: ``The dark scenario is so dark I can't imagine it.'' That is what he said.

So we pray now, as our leadership goes to the White House--and they are probably there right now meeting with the President--that they come out of that meeting with a plan--a plan to pay our bills, a plan to reopen government, and a plan to negotiate on anything Republicans and Democrats want to negotiate on. I pray so that this works out. But until it does, I am going to be here every day making the record for future Senators and for the history books that shutting down the government and threatening default, those kinds of weapons should be banned.

It is our job to pay the bills. It is our job to keep the government open, just as it is a pilot's job to fly the plane. He has to show up and fly it. We have to show up, pay the bills, keep the government open, and then negotiate our differences.

Thank you so much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Madam President, we are in the 13th day of a self- inflicted crisis brought to us by the Republicans. Why did this happen? Why are we in the 13th day of a shutdown, the 13th day of the American people not being able to count on their government, which is supposed to be of, by, and for the people? Why? Because Speaker Boehner over in the House said he does not believe the American people want the Affordable Care Act, and even though he believed they did not want a shutdown, unfortunately that is what he brought to the Nation. That is horrible news--horrible news. People are suffering. People are struggling. Hundreds of thousands of people are not getting their paychecks. Americans know a lot of us do count on that paycheck. It is not as if we have massive amounts of savings behind it. If you do not get that paycheck, you are in trouble. How do you pay the mortgage? How do you pay the rent? That is what is happening. We have police officers who talked to me yesterday, trying to use some gallows humor to explain away their fears. They are afraid. They cannot pay the bills. They have families. This is a disgrace--a self-inflicted disgrace--on our Nation.

I have not even gotten to the issue that is staring us in the face: perhaps the first time in history that America would not pay its bills--a default--even

though the Constitution is clear. It says, essentially, the debts of the United States shall not be questioned. That is in the Constitution. Well, they are being questioned.

We have a situation where not only are these employees of the Federal Government being laid off and not getting paid and the communities in which they live are going to suffer because they really cannot go down to the corner store, but the contractors are not getting paid; the small businesses are not getting paid; road projects--and I know something about this as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee--many new projects are stopped in their tracks, not because people are not ready to go but because all the various signoffs that have to be made before you start a project cannot be made; investigations into chemical explosions that kill people every single year in America stopped in their tracks; investigations into airplane crashes stopped in their tracks; little kids kept out of Head Start. Why? Because the Republicans do not like the Affordable Care Act.

What is it that they do not like about the Affordable Care Act, I ask rhetorically. Do they not like the fact that 3 million adults in America are now insured through their parents' plan--I am sure many in the Presiding Officer's State and I know in my State over 1 million. Are they that upset that they want to shut down the government because people are getting insurance?

Madam President, 71 million people across the country--8 million in my State--getting free preventive services, including immunization. Are they that upset that they would shut down the government and make our people suffer and shut the doors? Seventeen million kids with preexisting conditions like asthma and diabetes can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. The Presiding Officer is a champion for children. I can imagine how she feels about this. They want to repeal a law that finally has protected 17 million kids with preexisting conditions like asthma and diabetes. There are no more lifetime limits on policies.

There was a magnificent piece written in the Washington Post by one of my constituents--a mom, a freelance writer--who talks about her son who was born with a brain tumor, and over the years they have had to have operation after operation after operation. They came an inch away from reaching the lifetime limit on the policy--$500,000--and they learned the Affordable Care Act passed, and this child got his health care. Now, as she says, he is talking and he is walking and he is shooting baskets. I saw that mom and son on the Lawrence O'Donnell show the other night, and if you have not seen it on MSNBC, I think you ought to take a look at it.

So you have to wonder, what is it they are trying to do?

What is interesting is that if you listen to my colleagues now, they are off the Affordable Care Act. They kind of gave up on it because we said to them: This law passed 4 years ago. It has a steady stream of funding. It has its kinks and its problems. We are going to work with you on that. But you cannot stop it. It was upheld in the Supreme Court. You lost an election about it. Get a life. Figure it out. It is happening. OK. It is happening.

So now they have a new thing--deficits. Madam President, you are considered a fiscal conservative. I want to remind you and everyone listening within the sound of my voice that not only did the Democrats lead the way on a balanced budget, we actually got surpluses at the time Bill Clinton was President. How did we do it? We worked together with our Republican friends, but we passed a budget without one Republican vote and we set the stage. Do you know what happened? Not only did we have a surplus--in other words, we had extra money beyond a balanced budget--we had created at that time 23 million new jobs. What a glorious time. We did not do it by threatening to shut down the government. We did not do it by threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States of America. We did it by sitting down, looking at each other, smiling, shaking hands, and working together.

Let's open the government, let's pay our bills, and then let's sit down and really debate how we are going to get to a balanced budget. We have a lot of history to draw from. We do know when you put two wars on a credit card and the biggest tax break to millionaires in history on a credit card and a prescription drug benefit on a credit card it is a problem. That is why we saw, under George W. Bush, surpluses turn immediately into deficits. Now our colleagues suddenly are deficit hawks. Where were they when George W. was putting all this on the credit card? And now they do not want to pay the bills. It is unbelievable.

This is not complicated. This is a self-inflicted crisis. You keep the government open, you pay the bills, and through regular order, with my friend the good Senator from Alabama and my friend the great Senator also from Washington State, sitting down, hammering it out, we bring in Paul Ryan, we bring in the House Democrats, and we sit down, and through them we get a path forward.

Everything that is happening now is unnecessary. I want to repeat that. Everything that is happening now is unnecessary--13th day of a shutdown, pain and suffering throughout the country.

I have a little community in Los Angeles. Little kids--their noses are bleeding. They are sick. They live near some industrial site. EPA said they were getting on it. EPA got the message: You are out. We cannot help you. We are closed down; 92 percent furloughed.

You will notice in all those little mini-bills, Madam President, you did not see anything about that. No watchdogs anymore. The watchdogs are gone. We cannot have government by press release. We cannot have government by mini-bills. We are the greatest Nation on God's Earth, and we need to open the doors and let the people in.

We have elections. Elections have consequences. Republicans control the House, it is true, but Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Therefore, we need to work together. We do not threaten to shut down.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 60 seconds.

So here is the good news. The good news is we have a bill over in the House. It is a clean continuing resolution. It would open the doors to government immediately. And it is a very short-term CR-- continuing resolution--and would still preserve everyone's right to sit down and negotiate through regular order. We have a strong budget chairman. We have a strong budget ranking member. America has gotten to know them well. And the same in the House. Therefore, I put my faith in those folks under regular order.

So we could open this government in 5 minutes, we could pass a clean debt extension in 7 minutes, and then we sit down and negotiate. I did speak with Leader Reid this morning, and I feel he is optimistic that we are going to get there--I really do--and it lifts my spirits.

Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid have been around here a long time. They have had their ups and downs and sideways and everything else like everybody in the relationships here. But I think they know the moment of history is calling them. I put my faith in that. I hope I am right.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Louisiana. I am so appreciative of her because she is telling it like it is. She is sincere. She cares about her State.

Let me reassure her, she and I do not agree in terms of the parameters of oil drilling and Keystone and other issues. That has nothing to do with our friendship. But the Senator is exactly right. She deserves to have the permits run through the process. It is ridiculous. Just as the roadbuilders are waiting to have the EPA finish the environmental studies so they can get these roads--this government shutdown is brutal.

The reason I am rising--very briefly because I want to leave time for my friend from Oregon to say a few words--is because I wish to be so crystal clear to the people who might be watching us on this unusual Saturday session. We are in the midst of a Republican government shutdown. I am going to say that again. We are in the midst of a Republican shutdown of the government of the United States of America. The Senate passed a clean bill to reopen the government. It is sitting over there at Speaker Boehner's House, and he is blocking all ability to open this government. That is No. 1.

Now we are getting frighteningly close to a default. We are getting very close to the point where America will not be able to pay its bills. The cost of that to our Nation, to our people, to our reputation, to our economy, to our taxpayers cannot be overstated: disaster. We have a chance now to pass a clean debt ceiling bill, which means we will not default. I hope my colleagues will vote for it. They are filibustering it. We need 60 votes. I hope somebody will come to their senses over there because the results of not doing it would be disastrous. I think Senator Warner has spoken very clearly about what this means from the perspective of both a former governor and a businessman.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a newspaper article entitled ``Business, labor and nonprofits demand that the shutdown end `immediately.' ''

I am going to read a little bit from it and leave the remainder of time for my friend from Oregon:

The most prominent names in business, labor and the

nonprofit world on Friday demanded that Washington

``immediately'' end the government shutdown.

In a joint letter sent to President Obama and lawmakers,

leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and

United Way Worldwide said the shutdown shouldn't continue

another day.

``As leaders of business, labor, and the nonprofit sector,

we are writing to urge you to end the federal government

shutdown immediately,'' the letter says.

``While we may disagree on priorities for federal policies

and we even have conflicting views about many issues, we are

in complete agreement that the current shutdown is harmful

and the risk of default is potentially catastrophic for our

fragile economy.''

It goes on. I want to say to my Republican friends: Wake up. This isn't a letter from one Democratic group or a liberal group or even a centrist group. This is a letter from America, from the business leaders and the workers and the nonprofit leaders. You are so out of

step it is frightening. Vote with us for a clean debt ceiling so we will not default and we do not send a terrible message to the markets. Open this government now. Take up the Senate bill over there, Speaker Boehner, put it up for a vote. Let's open this government and give it back to the American people because they deserve it. They do not deserve to be treated this way. They do not deserve to be hurt.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I may speak for such time as I may consume.

Madam President, as we know, this is the 11th day of a completely manufactured crisis, a self-inflicted wound that came about because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are obsessed with repealing a law that is called the Affordable Care Act--a law that passed almost 4 years ago, and the benefits have taken root. I will go over those benefits for all Americans and a group of Americans who have had a very hard time getting insurance. We are only now being able to see them enroll for health insurance, and for some of them, this is the first time.

Because our colleagues are so obsessed with repealing this law, which passed almost 4 years ago and was upheld by the Supreme Court as being totally constitutional and about which there was a Presidential election and a Senate election in which the people who wanted to keep this law and make it better won, of course--the Republicans can't accept it. As a result, they have shut down the government.

We wouldn't know it if we listened to the speeches now because they have somewhat changed. Now they are saying they want cuts in Medicare and Social Security. That is what they want.

But when we go back 11 days, before the government shutdown, Speaker Boehner was crystal clear. He said: The American people don't want a government shutdown, but they don't want ObamaCare either.

The government shut down. They didn't listen to us. We explained to them that if the government shuts down, that won't stop the Affordable Care Act because those funds come from a different part of the government; they don't come from the appropriated moneys. At least 85 percent of the Affordable Care Act comes from another part of the government. We begged them and told them: If you shut down the government, health care is going to go forward anyway. Why on Earth would you shut down the government? They didn't listen. Now people in the country are saying: What are you guys doing?

I am prayerfully hopeful they will turn around and let us reopen this government--the government of the greatest country on Earth--and that they will also allow us to pay our bills and stop the possibility of default. If default happens, it will be first time in our history.

Yes, we are in the middle of a crisis, but it is manufactured and it is made up. If you think about deficits, look at what has happened since President Obama took office. Deficits have been cut in half. It can't be about deficits. The Affordable Care Act is not going to be stopped. What is this all about? A temper tantrum? A childish way to handle a situation about which they are not happy?

So Republicans who are listening to me know, I have served five Presidents since I came to Washington, first as a House Member and then as a Senator representing the largest State in the Union, the most fantastic State in the Union--but that is only my personal view-- California. There have been five Presidents--three Republicans and two Democrats. Obviously, I didn't agree with these Presidents all the time. Sometimes I really disagreed with them, such as over the Iraq war and tax breaks for billionaires. Both of those added mightily to the deficit. I opposed those, but I accepted the fact that all I could do was work to change things in a democratic way, try to pass legislation on those issues to bring the troops home and to make sure everyone pays their fair share. I didn't win those issues.

We all know that, yes, there are many times one votes against the debt ceiling as a show of displeasure, but we have never brought down the full faith and credit of the United States. The last time the Republicans tried this a couple of years ago, the Dow Jones average plunged and it cost us $19 billion. You would think they would have learned a lesson from that, but they didn't. You would think they would have learned a lesson from the Newt Gingrich shutdown that made their poll numbers plunge then.

We need to behave like grownups. I am prayerful and hopeful that we can see the talks that are starting in the Senate continue across party lines to resolve this.

Let's be clear. It is easy to solve this problem. This is the great news: It is easy to solve the problem. Allow our bill that passed here about 12 days ago to be voted on in the House--it will allow this government to reopen--and do not attach any riders to it, such as cutting Medicare, Social Security, or whatever your pet idea is. Then let's sit down and negotiate through the Appropriations Committee chairman, Barbara Mikulski, and through the Budget Committee chairman, Patty Murray. Then they can sit down with their counterparts and resolve our differences on spending, the deficit, and deficit reduction. It is very easy.

What Senator Reid is saying is absolutely the right thing to say. Pay our bills, and don't allow us to default. Pay our bills, open the government, and then we can talk about anything and everything that has to do with the budget.

Last week when we were in the middle of this, I went home to see how the Affordable Care Act was working in California. We are a State that has fully embraced the Affordable Care Act. We are 38 million strong, and we have millions of uninsured--millions of uninsured. I am getting daily reports from constituents. They are talking about the Affordable Care Act and what it means to them. These are constituents such as Janice Brown, a semiretired travel agent from Prather, CA. She called the help line and downloaded an application to buy a plan for $1,500 a month for herself and her husband. She said to the Associated Press that was $1,000 less than her current private plan. She said:

I'm thrilled. The coverage is better. It's fantastic.

Why do my friends want to shut down the government and stop Janice Brown, a semiretired travel agent from my State, from getting affordable health care? Why? Does it make them feel better to do that? I would hope not.

Dr. Travis Sanchez runs a chiropractic clinic in Salinas. It is one of the small businesses buying coverage under Covered California. Under the Affordable Care Act, Sanchez plans to offer his full-time employees the health care coverage which they currently lack. Do you know what he says? The Affordable Care Act is going to be life-changing for many of the people whom I see as a clinician every day.

Then Covered California told us about Paul Torrigino of Sacramento. He enrolled in a bronze plan. In California, you can get a gold plan, a silver plan and a bronze plan and the higher the plan--the gold plan-- the less of a copay. The bronze plan is less costly. So he said he enrolled in a bronze plan that was extremely affordable. He said:

Oh my gosh, the insurance has been going up for the last

few years like crazy. All our money was going to pay for

medical insurance.

Now he has this very affordable plan.

Leslie Foster, a 28-year-old freelance filmmaker in Hollywood, told the Wall Street Journal he found a plan that will cost him $62 a month. Because Leslie earns $20,000 a year, Federal assistance will pick up three-quarters of the cost of his premium. Leslie says he hasn't had comprehensive health insurance since 2006.

Why are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle trying to stop Leslie from getting comprehensive affordable health insurance? Because they didn't like the results of the election? Because they were mad the Supreme Court said the bill was constitutional?

I am at a loss to understand it.

Then I have San Franciscan Paul Cello. He told KQED that he selected a plan that would save him more than $300 a month. He said:

It's like a whole 'nother world. The coverage is better . .

. a lower premium, no pre-existing condition exclusions, I

get mental health coverage, so there's way more coverage than

I had and I'm going to be saving.

These are real people with a heart and a pulse and a life and hopes and dreams and they are finally getting health insurance. Yet my friends on the other side of the aisle are stamping their feet and having a tantrum because they don't like it. I don't know why they don't like it. They ought to come to meet these people.

I have Rachel Mansfield of La Quinta. Nothing could dissuade her. She sent in an application for Covered California on Tuesday. She has been waiting for the exchange to start so she and her husband could get health insurance. She got it. Her new premium will be around $400 for both of them, with higher quality coverage than she currently has.

Melissa Harris, a communications student at Fresno State, stopped at a Covered California tent on campus Tuesday. She is paying $600 a month--with help from family members--for insurance through her former employer. She has diabetes, hypertension and other medical issues and lives on disability payments. Under the Affordable Care Act, which prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, Harris said she can afford health insurance on her own. ``It's a godsend for me--a blessing,'' Harris, 33, said.

At the Fresno County Department of Social Services, people were signing up for Medicaid. ``I came in for food stamps,'' Kevin Burke, 51, told the Fresno Bee. An assembly worker, Burke said he has been out of work for two years. He had Medi-Cal previously, but was disenrolled when his daughter turned 18, he said. Under the Affordable Care Act, Americans under 133% of the federal poverty level are now eligible for Medicaid, regardless of how older their children are, or if they have children at all.

At Vista Health Center, Rufina Arango, who is diabetic, filled out an

application for coverage through a significant expansion of Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program. Rufina and her family lost their health insurance several years ago, when her husband was laid off after 22 years working for a wood products manufacturer in Windsor. ``It's great, because it is going to help many of us. If not for Obamacare, many of us would not qualify for health insurance,'' Rufina told the Press Democrat.

I have to point out an op-ed piece that appeared in the Washington Post this week about the experience of one of my constituents with the Affordable Care Act. This constituent of mine and her son were also on the Lawrence O'Donnell show last night. Anyone who watched that show-- anyone with heart and a soul--would understand how amazing it is for her that the Affordable Care Act passed. Let me tell you the story.

Janine Reid is a writer from the San Francisco Bay area. This is the title of her opinion piece that ran in the Washington Post. ``ObamaCare saved my family from financial ruin.'' Let me repeat the title. ``ObamaCare saved my family from financial ruin.''

She relates her experience with her loving son, Mason. He had brain cancer and he had to undergo major surgeries and multiple surgeries. He would have hit his lifetime limit and the family would have been driven into, in her words, the ``financial abyss'' without the Affordable Care Act. Do you know what she says? She writes that the family thanks ``God and whoever else would listen for our good fortune to have coverage.'' She ends her piece with this line: If I could get those who are trying to repeal this law:

. . . on a conference call, I would explain this to them. I

would tell them that while they were busy trying to derail

the Affordable Care Act over the past two years, Mason has

again learned to walk, talk, eat and shoot a three-point

basket.''

Why would anyone--anyone in the Senate, in the House, in the country--want to hurt a family like that? I am just saying, I don't get it. Because a law is a law is a law. We don't decide that one day we are going to undermine a law. You don't do that. You live by the law. If you want to change it, of course, you have a chance. They tried 43 times to repeal it. It didn't get repealed. They shut down the government over it and it didn't get repealed and it will not get repealed. My constituents are not going back. No one is going to take away their benefits.

Most Americans may not even realize the benefits they are already getting under the Affordable Care Act. Wherever they live, whether in the State of the Presiding Officer or my State, 3 million young adults are now covered through their parents' plan. Three million young adults are now insured through their parents' plan, and 71 million Americans are getting preventive care, such as checkups, birth control, and immunizations. Let me say it again. Millions of Americans are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Seventy-one million Americans are getting free preventive care, such as checkups, birth control, and immunizations. Three million young adults are now insured through their parents' plans.

Why do my colleagues want to take that away from Americans? Why do my colleagues want to shut down the government? Because they don't like it. What is it they don't like about this; that some young person doesn't have to fret or his parents don't have to be worried sick that their kid doesn't have health insurance. Now 17 million kids with preexisting conditions, such as asthma and diabetes, can no longer be denied coverage. Why do my friends want to take that away from the families in the United States of America? Why? Why did they shut down the government to take that away? What are they thinking?

Insurers can no longer cancel your health insurance because you get sick. The Chair knows as do I that you could be going along 100 miles an hour and all of a sudden get an illness and be shocked and all of a sudden imagine getting a note from your insurer saying: Sorry you just got sick, Senator Boxer, but we are canceling your health insurance. That happened every day of the week, but it can't happen anymore. Why do my Republican friends want to cancel out that benefit? No lifetime limits on coverage.

I just told the story about the woman who lives in the San Francisco Bay area whose son was born with a brain tumor and who needed constant operations. They hit up against the lifetime limit. But when ObamaCare went into effect, otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act, guess what, no more lifetime limits and the child was saved and the family was saved from financial ruin.

These are just some of the benefits that are going into effect and now are in effect.

Then the Republicans said: Oh, the Affordable Care Act is going to make everything cost so much. No, health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in over 50 years, and insurance companies have to justify premium hikes, so we are getting back checks if they overcharge us. Listen, 8.5 million Americans have received rebate checks from their insurance companies because of the Affordable Care Act. Do my friends want to get that money back, take it away from the people? They shut down the government. They must think that is a very bad idea.

I can't answer the question as to why they want to take away these benefits, but I can guess at their motivation. They are throwing a temper tantrum. They don't like the way the election turned out. They don't like what the Supreme Court did. A law is a law.

I don't get it. Speaker Boehner said he is shutting down the government, punishing people, because of ObamaCare. We told him you can't stop it. He tried and failed 43 times to repeal it. He stamped his foot and he shut down the government. Now that we have proven to him he can't stop the Affordable Care Act, now that he sees how many people are benefiting from it, he should open the government. Eleven days the greatest country in the world has been shut down.

I have to tell you, in my great State--and we could all talk about our States, I know the Chair did this--we have a magnificent national park called Yosemite. Honest to God, the first time I stepped on that valley floor I thought I was in Heaven. I had never seen anything like it. There are 3,500 Park Service employees who have been furloughed, with 600 of them at Yosemite.

Here is the thing people don't seem to understand. It is not only the pain of the people who have saved to get to a place such as Yosemite and saved for their families and are looking forward to this opportunity, it is also the small businesses that surround the park.

Douglas Shaw, co-owner of Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort, may have to lay off 30 percent of his staff. He said:

We're a good example of a business that could die if this

continues. This is all we've got, and I'm scared, honestly. I

don't think a lot of people realize how important this issue

is for a great many people whose livelihoods are at stake.

Derek Arakelian and his wife Marielle Debree were laid off from their jobs at Yosemite. They held a yard sale to raise money. They held a yard sale to raise money. They said:

We've got a new little boy and a lot of expenses. We need

to make money to pay our bills.

Why are they shutting down the government? The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. A law is a law is a law is a law. We all have our issues. Serving here for a long time, as I said, I have opposed wars, opposed tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, I have opposed rollbacks in environmental regulations that I thought were critical, and I saw us turn away from sensible ways to protect our people. I wasn't happy. I have a right not to be happy, and they have a right not to be happy. But I don't have a right to decide which laws I am going to say should be enforced. I have an obligation, if I don't like the law, to work my heart out in the next election and change things. That is what you do in a democracy. You don't pick and choose.

Then they have their little bills coming over here. I call it governing by press release. Something gets hot, they hear a story I am going to tell, and they say: Oh, well, we will open that little segment.

We don't run a country that way. We don't run a country by press release. We don't run a country in order to get political cover. We have an obligation to keep the doors open, to make sure things work better, to negotiate over

budgets. You don't negotiate by taking hostages. This time the hostages are the American people--people such as Doug Shaw, co-owner of Yosemite Mountain Resort, and people who are laid off--firefighters at the Forest Service. They are working without pay. Lovely. We are getting our pay. One of these firefighters says:

Most people here live paycheck to paycheck.

It is a disgrace. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop its seasonal flu tracking program, and furloughed 9,000 employees. My understanding is they have brought back some of their employees, but they are not getting paid, and they are standing sentry.

David Johnson of San Francisco is the CEO of GigaGen, which does immune system research to help organ transplant succeed. The NIH awarded him a small business grant of over $1 million. He has already hired staff, but he can't get the funds until this shutdown ends. How many of us have read about people who get into trouble because their body rejects the organ? Here is a guy getting $1 million from the NIH, and he can't get the funds. It is shocking.

Why do they shut down the government? They don't like the health care bill that is helping so many people. Now they don't even talk about it. Now they talk about cutting Social Security and Medicare. That is their new dream. That is what they want now. I don't know how that makes us a better country. They can explain it for themselves. Open the government, pay our bills, stop the default, and then we can negotiate. The President has been clear. There is nothing he won't talk about.

Speaking as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee and as a member of the commerce committee, 93 percent of the EPA have been furloughed. The Environmental Protection Agency has the support of about 75 percent of the American people, if not more. They are under attack constantly. That is one reason we never saw a mini- bill to restore the Environmental Protection Agency. They don't care over there. But what do these employees do? They guard our landmark environmental laws. They ensure our drinking water is safe, our rivers are safe to swim in, and our air is safe to breathe. They make sure that Superfund sites are cleaned up. Five hundred Superfund sites, and they have stopped the cleanup. And look at what a Superfund site is: It is a toxic brew of toxins that can hurt you, such as arsenic, benzine-- you name it, the worst things. My Republican friends shut down the government because they want to stop the Affordable Care Act. They are also now stopping cleanup of Superfund sites in their own communities where they are a threat to children, to pregnant women, and to our families and our seniors. How does that make us a better country when we have no inspectors on the ground, not one in California, to make sure the air is safe and the water is safe?

Then, if we care about farming--and I know most of us do--EPA is responsible for the inventory of pesticides imported from abroad. This means that millions of dollars of imported agricultural chemicals have been stuck at U.S. ports because EPA personnel are not on hand to approve them for entry. This could be devastating for our agricultural economy, and it could further raise food prices for consumers.

Somebody explain to me how a government shutdown helps the farmers who are waiting for these pesticides to be cleared by the EPA. Somebody explain to me how a government shutdown helps when we have many road projects that are just getting ready to go forward, but we don't have any of the agencies ready to complete the studies to make sure they are safe enough to go forward. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, and most of them, when it comes to the highway bill, are in the private sector.

We just learned yesterday that 92 percent of the workers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been furloughed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fulfills a critical mission. The NRC was created ``to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials.'' Anyone who has been alive the last year or so knows about Fukushima and what happened to the people there and understands when you are dealing with radioactive materials you are dealing with danger. The NRC had to furlough 92 percent of the workers because the Republicans don't like the Affordable Care Act, and they shut down the government.

Open it up. Enough is enough. Give the people back the government they asked for in this last election.

I understand. I didn't like it many times in my life, but I dealt with it. Grow up. Curling up in a corner and having a temper tantrum with a blanket and your teddy bear is not the right way to deal with it. Open the government, sit down with us, and tell us what you want to fix.

We have already agreed to a low number in the continuing resolution, a number we don't like at all and think is too low. We think it is a hardship. We agreed to the lower number because we wanted to have a chance to negotiate. Senator Mikulski is ready. Senator Murray is ready. We tried 21 times to get to conference with them and negotiate a budget, and 21 times they objected. And then they have--I have to use the word now--the chutzpah to say we won't negotiate when we tried 21 times to go to conference. There are no inspectors on the job to make sure the air is clean, to make sure the water is safe, and to make sure the nuclear powerplants are safe.

The Republicans talk about the parks, and I appreciate it. But they fail to mention that the Army Corps manages 12 million acres of public lands and waters nationwide, and the recreation areas host 370 million visits annually. These recreation areas support local businesses like resorts, marinas outfitters, grocery stores, gas stations, and hotels which provide goods and services to visitors as well as boost our Nation's economy. Because of this Republican shutdown the Corps closed Lake Mendocino located north of San Francisco. Lake Mendocino hosts half a million visitors annually, and in 2010 visitors spent $12.7 million at businesses within 30 miles of Lake Mendocino, supporting 106 jobs and $2.8 million in labor income.

So we get a little mini-bill over there, open the parks. No, open the government. Open all our recreation areas. Don't do this government by piecemeal, government by press release, government by your favorite agency. It is ridiculous. No party, Republican or Democratic, has the right to say to a community: You will thrive, but you will die. No party has the right.

I have a community near Los Angeles called University Park. The L.A. Times did a big story. The children there are suffering illness and everyone believes it is from an oil and gas site nearby. It is an environmental issue. The kids are suffering, and we don't know what is wrong with them. We called the EPA. They said: Senator we will be right on it. The government shut down. We don't have any inspectors in California.

Those kids are sick. So we get a small bill. Let's help the kids with cancer. Of course we want to. What about these kids? We don't know what they have. No party, Republican or Democratic, should say this child lives, and we are not sure about this child.

That is not America. This is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It is not for the Republicans to decide what they want to fund. It is for all of us to decide. Open the government. You shut it down because of the Affordable Care Act; I appreciate it. Fight that. We were with the President for a couple of hours yesterday. Republican Senators were with him today. He said he would look at everything. But don't keep this government closed and don't bring us to the first default we have ever had.

The National Transportation Safety Board furloughed 380 of its 400 employees. In my State we had an investigation going on into the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash. This crucial hearing was to include the testimony of foreign officials from Asia. Its postponement and the ongoing shutdown will delay the entire investigation. We need to know what went wrong, but this shutdown has shut down that investigation. Two weeks ago there was a small plane crash at the Santa Monica Airport that killed four people, and the NTSB is unable to investigate the crash. They had to take their materials, stick them in a file, and hopefully, some day they will come back to it.

Open this government. Don't say this community will thrive and that one will die, this family will get help and this one won't, this Federal worker will get paid, but we are not sure about that Federal worker, while they take their checks. This is stunning.

It is no wonder the American people are expressing their views, and I hope they will continue to put pressure on those who have this government shut down. There is no winner in a shutdown. It is devastating. And my friends keep saying they don't want it.

So open the government. It is easy. We did it here. It is waiting over there for John Boehner to call it up. Don't add your pet peeves to it. I have a lot of pet peeves I would like to add to it, too. This shutdown is devastating for our workers, our businesses, our contractors, for our economy.

Speaker Boehner, put that bill on the floor. Let's open this government. Let's not default for the first time.

I was here in the House when Ronald Reagan was the President. Here is what he said about default:

The full consequences of a default--or even the serious

prospect of default--by the United States are impossible to

predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full

faith and credit of the United States would have substantial

effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of

the dollar.

We named an airport after him, a building after him. Let's pass this debt ceiling in his honor. He warned us. What has gone wrong with the party of Ronald Reagan? Where have they gone? What are they thinking-- shut down the government? The last time they did, it cost a fortune. The last time they played with the debt, it cost a fortune. We hear about people dumping American bonds. Is that what they want?

Open up the government. Let the people have their government. It is a self-inflicted mess.

It is as though you wake up in the morning, it is a pretty nice day, you feel pretty good and, all of a sudden, you decide you are going to hit yourself with a brick. Oh my God.

These little mini bills--how ridiculous.

That reminds me, one of my friends gave me this analogy, which I think is right on, which is you see a woman drowning and you grab her and you take her halfway to the shore and you leave her and she drowns anyway. That is what these mini ``press release'' bills are. You find someone bleeding to death but you only sew them up halfway. It is a self-inflicted mess. That is the bad news.

The good news is, because it is self-inflicted, it is easy to get out of it. All you have to do there is take up the Senate bill and pass it. The Presiding Officer knows, she served there proudly. It has the Republican budget numbers in it, which we think are way too low, but we agreed to them as a compromise because we did not want to see the government shut down.

Take up the bill and pass it. Then we can talk about all these issues. Don't allow the greatest Nation in the world to default.

Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United

States would have substantial effects on the domestic

financial markets and the value of the dollar.

I used to work on Wall Street--a very long time ago. We saw what happened when the markets thought we were not going to get together and resolve this default situation. The markets started to go down, 300 points, 200 points, and then at the mere hope that we could fix this problem, the markets shot up. The markets are watching. They know what is happening here. We are going to have a vote to lift the debt ceiling, to make sure we do not default on bills that were already incurred.

Let me be clear on that. We are talking about paying the bills we already incurred. You have to do that when you are a homeowner. You pay your mortgage. You pay your bills.

Then they started to say, what is a default? That was unbelievable. I looked it up in Black's Law Dictionary. If you don't pay your bills, that is a default. Don't tell me you pay the interest on the debt but you cannot pay the other bills--no, no, that is not the Black's Law Dictionary definition. Pay your bills. Don't make this Nation a deadbeat. If you want to treat your family that way, that is your choice, but this is the USA family. We do not default and we do not threaten default. Ronald Reagan warned us:

Open up the Government, pay your bills.

It is basic stuff. It is not complicated. Majority Leader Reid has been clear. He is a guy who can compromise, negotiate, talk--he has been around a long time. But he just said it: Open the government, pay our bills, and we will negotiate.

We are going to hear a lot of words, but I want people to understand why the government is shut down. The government is shut down because the House, Republican House under the leadership of John Boehner or Eric Cantor or Paul Ryan--we are never sure. Every day it is someone new but it is supposed to be John Boehner--fine. I like him. That doesn't change where we are. They refuse to take up the bill that opens up the government--let's be clear--just until November. And it takes the numbers the Republicans like and we do not like and we say OK, we will give you that, let's keep the government open. We did it over here. I thank my Republican friends who voted to allow us to vote on that bill. That was a hard vote for them and I am very appreciative of that.

All Boehner has to do is take up that bill and pass it. That is all. Then we are out of the shutdown mess and that self-inflicted wound is gone. We can negotiate over the budget as we should. Then all they have to do is join us and make sure we do not default for the first time in history and make this country a deadbeat nation. How horrible. How embarrassing.

I will close with this. This self-inflicted wound mattered so much that President Obama had to cancel a trip to the Asian countries. That trip was important for our economy and for jobs and to get foreign investment. They did not care. We did our best, we sent the best face we could, Senator Kerry, Secretary of State. He did his best, but I know that was not a good thing to do because it gave China the upper hand. China made some cracks about the dysfunction here in the West. We are dysfunctional here, self-inflicted dysfunction, self-inflicted crisis.

This is not Hurricane Sandy. This is not the horrible blizzard that happened in South Dakota. I want to send my best to our colleagues there who are suffering because of what happened from that blizzard. Someday we will talk a little bit about climate change--maybe we can move forward--and the extreme weather that is happening. But I am not going to talk about that now. I have enough problems.

What we need to do today is the right thing for the country: Open up the government that belongs to the American people. It is easy. That is our job. Make sure we do not default. Then we sit down as friends, as colleagues across the aisle, and we negotiate all the important issues that Republicans care about and Democrats care about. I look forward to those negotiations.

I hope as they are going on around now in little back rooms around us that we are finding a way out of this mess. But we cannot forget what brought us here and the reason I wanted to be here today is to make it known in this Congressional Record the harm that has been done. There is a reason why there has not been a shutdown since I think it was 1996. There is a reason--because the people who lived through it recognized it was devastating. I guess the memory faded. People say: Oh, there have been 19 shutdowns. Yes, but there has not been one in all those years, since 1996. It is a lot of years. The reason is, it was devastating.

I want to put in the Record, first of all, how the Affordable Care Act is benefiting the people of this country already. Yes, it has had its major problems on getting on its webpage and the rest. We had that the first day in California, but we had millions of visits to the site, millions. We didn't expect it. It is going to be smoothed out. Yes, there will be ways to fix it. But I wanted to put in the Record the individual stories of my people and how they will benefit and how, it seems to me, so counterintuitive to stop a bill that was passed almost 4 years ago, upheld by the Supreme Court, and now finally is going into place. It is wrong to shut down the government because of such a law that is bringing peace of mind to so many--tens of thousands already in California signed up. I had to make that point.

I also want to reiterate what Ronald Reagan said, President Reagan, about playing with the full faith and credit of the United States. I want the American people to think about why we are in this place and how they can stop this from ever happening again, because I think it is a disgrace and it is wrong.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 12, 2013, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that the time until 12 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees.

Madam President, at noon tomorrow there will be a cloture

vote on the motion to proceed to S. 1569, the debt limit legislation.

Madam President, I understand that H.J. Res. 79 has been received from the House and it is at the desk.

Madam President, I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order, following the remarks of Senators Sessions and Blunt.

Madam President, would it be possible--because Senator Casey and I were each thinking we would get 10 minutes and we are willing to cut that to 15 minutes between the two of us--could we ask unanimous consent, if the Republicans don't mind, just slipping a little bit, because people took extra time.

Thank you. So we will each have about 7\1/2\ minutes.

Madam President, we are going to fix the injustice my colleague spoke about--the injustice to the families who lost their loved ones. Let me be clear about one of those five families who were denied the benefit and someone important to me a constituent of mine-- Army 1LT Jennifer Moreno from San Diego, who was killed this weekend in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. Jennifer was 25 years old. Because of this shutdown brought to us by the Republicans, those families have to suffer even more than they are already suffering.

Let's be clear. This never had to happen. This government has been shut down by the Republicans for one reason, and John Boehner was honest about it. He said:

The American people don't want to shut down the government,

but the American people don't want ObamaCare. They don't want

the Affordable Care Act.

Let me say that to close down the government because a person doesn't like a law that was passed almost 4 years ago, to shut down the government because a presidential election was lost and which was based, in large part, on this--to shut down the government, to keep our people--millions of them--from getting affordable care for the first time, it is a disgrace. It is. There is no other way to say it, except maybe it was said beautifully here. It was said beautifully here by the chaplain: ``Enough is enough.''

We are going to fix this problem; of course we are, this indignity our military families had to face. But let's be clear: It never would have happened if the government had been open.

We have two things that are in our job description. I know the Presiding Officer knows that quite well. One is to keep the doors of government open officially. We do our best, but we don't always succeed. There are problems here and there. Keep the doors open. Just as a pilot has to fly a plane, just like a teacher has to teach a class, just like a nurse has to give a vaccination, we have a basic responsibility to keep this government open, and we know how to do it. They pass a budget over in the House, we pass it in the Senate, the conference is called, they hammer it out, and we have a budget plan, and none of this would be happening. Let's be clear. The Republicans have objected now 21 times--21 times--to Senator Murray, the chairman of our Budget Committee, so she can sit and confer with her counterpart, Paul Ryan, and hammer out the details of a long-term budget. But, no. The Republicans don't want to do that. They want to hold the country hostage. They want to put our backs up against the wall, or the backs of the American people. Why? They don't like the health care law.

If a person doesn't like a law, that person tries to repeal it. They tried to repeal it 43 times. It went nowhere. If you don't like a law, try to replace the people who support the law. Oh, they tried. They tried and they failed. I served with five Presidents, three of them Republican. I didn't like everything they did; believe me. But after they won and they had an agenda, I did what I could, and so did my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to carry it out the best I could, to fix it where I could.

Let me just say this: We are in a shutdown because they are throwing a temper tantrum about the health care law, the Affordable Care Act. I wish to share some news with them, because I went home to see how the health care law is working in my State. I want to say what I know. I know it is working. By now we have had more than a million distinct visitors to our site, coveredCA.com. We have tens of thousands of applications. We have completed more than 20,000. Small businesses by the hundreds are coming on to the site.

In the time I have remaining, let me read to my colleagues about one woman the Republicans want to stop from getting health care by shutting down the government. According to the Associated Press, nothing could dissuade Rachel Mansfield of La Quinta, who sent in an application to Covered California last week. Rachel has been waiting for the exchange to start so she and her husband could get health insurance. Rachel is self-employed. Her parents currently pay a $530 monthly premium for her coverage. Her husband has been rejected for health coverage because he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Rachel's new premium, instead of it being $530 for just her, will be $400 for both of them, with higher quality coverage than she currently has.

That is why the Republicans are having a temper tantrum, to stop my constituent from, for the first time, having peace of mind and having good insurance? Come on. If you don't like the law, work with us. We can make it better.

Then there is Melissa Harris. According to the Fresno Bee, Melissa stopped at a CoveredCA tent on campus. She is paying $600 a month with help from her family for insurance through her former employer. She has diabetes and hypertension and, under the Affordable Care Act--which prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions--she can now afford health insurance on her own. And the quote from her, from my constituent is, ``It's a Godsend for me--a blessing.''

It is a blessing. And that is why the Republicans are shutting down the government, to stop my constituent from getting a blessing of health insurance.

There was another story of a man who waited on the phone for 40 minutes, and he finally got on. He signed up and he said: You know what, I have been waiting for years. Forty minutes was nothing.

So I say to my friends, the law is the law. Open the government, pay our bills, and we will negotiate.

Mr. President, I yield the rest of the time to Senator Casey.

Reserving the right to object.

I appreciate the motion of my colleague, as someone who comes from a State where tourism is the No. 3--and we have 38 million people--it is the No. 3 business in our State. We have national parks. But guess what. You fellows over there, you did not take care of all of my recreation land under the Army Corps. You did not take care of all of the BLM land.

This whole notion of funding the government piecemeal is absurd. This is the greatest Nation on Earth. All you can do is come with these little, mini, piecemeal bills. Let's face it. We would not be going through any of this angst, and my friend would not have to have any of that emotion if the Republicans had not shut down the government.

I wish to state the rest of my reservation. We certainly support the notion that our parks should open, but we also support the notion that this government should open. If the Senators don't like certain functions, let's duke it out and find out which ones we have the votes to do away with. I know a lot of you don't like the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act. Fine, let's fight that out.

I see my colleague from Wyoming is here. He and I are constantly debating the issue of what should be a priority, but we don't do it this way. We need the entire Federal Government open. People need to get paid. The communities around the parks, around the

BLM land, around the Corps recreational lands, around our NASA Ames facility, and I could go on and on--they need to be paid because the mom-and-pop shops are suffering. We don't do government by piecemeal, not in the greatest Nation on Earth.

This reminds me of a woman who is drowning and someone goes to rescue her, but he only takes her halfway to the shore and leaves her to drown. This is what this is about. We don't say: I will save this child, but this one I don't have to save. I will save this community because I kind of like it, but this community, sorry. No one party has a right to do it, not the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. We don't have the right to decide which kids live and which kids die, which families thrive and which sink, and which communities suffer and which communities don't. None should suffer, not in this Nation.

Open the government, pay our bills, and let's negotiate. Let's negotiate on everything.

I have a modification to suggest to the unanimous consent request, if I might.

I ask unanimous consent that the consent be modified as follows: That an amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the joint resolution, as amended, then be read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. This amendment is the text that passed the Senate and is a clean continuing resolution for the entire government and is something that is already over in the House and reportedly has the support of a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives.

Reserving the right to object to the original request.

I feel I must respond. Senator Murray and I looked at each other and said: It feels as though it is ``Alice in Wonderland.''

Where were my colleagues 21 times when the chairman of the Budget Committee or her representatives asked to go to conference on the budget resolution, in which the conferees would negotiate how to fund the various parts of government, and that instruction would be sent to the appropriators? I do not understand what is happening here.

All we hear on the other side is negotiate, negotiate. They won't remember--selective memory, perhaps--that they objected 21 times to going to negotiations on the budget.

I have to say, this is the saddest display coming from the Republicans, who serve in the greatest legislative body in the world, to try to fund this government on a piecemeal basis, leaving some of our families winners and some of our families losers. It is pathetic, and they have caused this Republican shutdown. They can end it.

Because I feel my friend's narrow, piecemeal approach to running this country is very wrong for this country, I object.

While the junior Senator from Kentucky is on the floor, I want to make sure the American people know the answer to the question my friend from Illinois asked him--who was President the last time there was not only a balanced budget but a surplus? The answer is Bill Clinton. And I was here when we had that vote. So, I think, was the Senator from Illinois. We did not get one Republican to join us in that budget that actually worked so well that we had a surplus until the Republicans put a huge tax cut for billionaires on the credit card, and two wars.

Let's be clear here, what this is about. We have to open the government, we have to pay our bills, and then let the good Senator from Washington go negotiate with Congressman Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and yes, we can see our way to a balanced budget. But let's not play these games of government by piecemeal spending.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period of morning business for debate only be extended to 7:30 p.m. and that all provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for such time as I might consume.

Mr. President, I think we are all in a state of shock that we are entering the fourth day of a government shutdown with no movement in sight.

I wanted to go home to California to see how the Affordable Care Act is going in California since that is the reason the Republicans have shut down the government. I want to report that people there cannot understand why on Earth the Republicans want to stop the Affordable Care Act. They can't believe that just as Californians are on the brink of getting millions of our citizens insured and small businesses are getting affordable health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, Republicans not only have shut down the government, but they are threatening default. And they understand that default would lead to economic chaos. It has never happened before in American history. I tried to explain to my constituents exactly what has been going on here, and I did it in the best way I could, and I think I was fair.

The first thing: In order to keep the government open for 6 weeks, they wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They tried 43 times. That never worked, so then they said they would defund it, which everybody understands that if you don't fund it, it is the same thing. But we told them they couldn't defund most of it because most of it is not appropriated funds. They didn't care. They put that forward. That went nowhere.

Then they said: We won't repeal it or defund it. We will delay the Affordable Care Act.

We all said: If you think we are going to delay further the chance for millions of Americans to get affordable insurance, we are not going to do it. This bill passed 3\1/2\ years ago and was upheld by the Supreme Court. It is not going to happen.

Then they said: We will just take part of it and stop part of it. We won't allow women to get preventive services.

That went over like a lead balloon, their war on women again. They were saying women won't be able to get tested for cervical cancer, for STDs, for pregnancy-related diabetes. They were just going to shut that part of the Affordable Care Act down. Women here in

the Senate held a press conference, and they dropped that.

Then they said: OK, we are going to repeal one of the revenue streams that is going to cost $30 billion, but we have no way to replace it.

So then they actually sent us a provision that would have added $30 billion to the deficit--from the Republican Party. They say they are so fiscally conservative, and they actually sent us a provision that would cost $30 billion with no way to pay for it. So that didn't go down to well.

This one is really beautiful. They say our staff and the staff of anyone working in the White House--all these people who believe so much in giving back to their great country will no longer get the employer contribution that all Americans get who work for large employers. That is their great ``thank you'' to their staff. That is their great show of appreciation--besides shutting down the government where their staff is working without pay.

So I explained this to my constituents who are trying to sign up for health care.

I went to a really good community health care center where people are lining up and getting information and they will be signing up for health care.

They said: Well, why would they do this?

I said: Well, there is more bad news. We thought they would extend the debt ceiling, which is the way you pay for the debts you have already incurred. It is already on the credit card. We need to pay for that, and now they are threatening not to pay the bills of the United States of America. They are threatening to take this country into default.

Now they are saying: Well, maybe we won't do it if we can cut Medicare and Medicaid.

So now they have put the Affordable Care Act on the line, they have put Medicare on the line, Medicaid on the line, Social Security is out there, and they may cause a default if we don't deal with these programs that are so critical to our people.

I have been around here a long time, and I know we have differences. But the President is right when he says we the Congress have two things we have to do. One of them is that we have to keep the doors open because we have passed laws and they need to be carried out. Keep the government open. And the second thing we have to do is pay our bills that we incurred. Raise the debt ceiling. So far, the Republicans refuse.

We sent a clean continuing resolution over there without all this cutting health care, Medicare, and Social Security that they are interested in. We said: Let's just keep the government open and going for 6 weeks, raise the debt ceiling, and then of course we will talk about all of this. That is what we do. We negotiate. We talk. And the President is more than willing. He offered the Republicans a $4 trillion deficit-reduction deal. They walked away. He is willing to talk about everything and anything. But you have to keep the government going and you have to pay your bills. That is the fundamental work we have to do. The irony, of course, is we get our checks. But our staff, they do not get their checks. The workers who come back because they are deemed essential, they are working without getting their pay.

This is an outrage. Speaker Boehner, all you have to do is put the continuing resolution on the floor for an up-or-down vote. Every Democrat will vote for it and, at last count, the newspapers say at least 21 Republicans. Open up the government. We are knocking on the door. Open it up. Guess what you will find behind the door? People who want to work, people who need a paycheck.

I have to tell you, they passed a bill that says they are going to pay Federal workers after the shutdown, and that is good. They should have done that. But right now we hear Republicans over here who say they don't really think that is a great idea. I have a better idea than even that: Open up the government and pay people for doing the jobs they were hired to do.

I have a ranking member who has asked for a big hearing on climate change, and he wants all the administration officials to show up. We were planning on that. But most of them have absolutely no staff, and they are responding to emergencies. If there is a chemical explosion, the chemical safety board has to respond. If there is a horrible coal ash spill, the EPA will have to respond. If there is a disastrous cancer hot spot, the EPA will have to respond. Open up the government. Don't just say to people you will get paid so you don't have to bother coming to work. Open up the government. Let people work for the pay they are supposed to get. This is an outrage.

I have to say when they passed over there ``pay the workers,'' we know why they did it. It was political. Because the heat in Virginia is so hot in this gubernatorial race, even the far right Republicans over there said to open up the government and fight about health care later.

I have to say when I went home and I saw people waiting to sign up for coveredCA.com, I learned that on the first day coveredCA.com had 5 million hits and 500,000 distinct users. Some 17,000 people called Covered California service centers and over 6,000 Californians began to sign up on the first day. On the second day they had 200,000 distinct users.

They are training thousands of enrollment counselors there. Many of them are already insurance agents. Many of them are going to work for big providers like Kaiser Permanente. Many of them are going to be in the community health care centers. Why do the Republicans want to shut down the government and threaten the default of this Nation when we are on the brink of getting millions of people the health insurance they need and deserve? The small business community is going to have an opportunity to get better rates and better tax breaks.

I want to talk a little bit about this threat of default because the threat of default is real. Let's start off and go through a couple of charts. First of all, we have a new thing going on. The junior Senator from Oklahoma today said: Oh, you don't default if you don't pay people what they are owed, only if you default on interest payments.

All of a sudden there is a new definition. But if you don't pay Social Security, he doesn't consider it a default. If you don't pay for Medicare, he doesn't consider it a default. If you don't pay contractors, he doesn't consider it a default.

Why don't we go to Black's Law Dictionary:

Default: The failure to make a payment when due.

Let's be clear, there is not one bill that is coming due that Congress did not pass. Let's be clear. Congress makes the decisions on spending. We default when we fail to make a payment when due. They are playing, as Jack Lew, the Treasury Secretary, said, with fire--playing with fire.

Let's see what has been said about default. Default means you fail to raise the debt ceiling in order to accommodate the bills you have already incurred. Ronald Reagan, the hero of the Republican Party:

The full consequences of a default--or even the serious

prospect of a default--by the United States are impossible to

predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full

faith and credit of the United States would have substantial

effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of

the dollar.

Ronald Reagan said that in 1983. Why don't the Republicans listen to their hero? He said even the thought of a default was dangerous for this Nation. The last time they played these games it cost billions of dollars because we were downgraded. Let's look at Douglas Holtz-Eakin, CBO Director under George W. Bush, talking about default:

It's a bad idea, little defaults, big defaults; defaults, a

bad idea, period, and there should be no one who believes

otherwise.

If they don't listen to Ronald Reagan, why don't they listen to the CBO Director under George W. Bush? I tell you, these guys are in the fringes. They are in the fringe lane. They are in the far right, and they are going to go off the road, and if it were just them, it would be one thing, but they are taking America with them. We have to stand up and be counted around here and not let this go without comment.

Mark Zandi, he was John McCain's economic adviser. Here is what said:

The dark scenario is so dark I can't imagine it.

He is talking about a default. Speaker Boehner is standing there saying: Well, despite the fact that you read that I didn't want a default, I can't

contemplate approving this without figuring out how to cut entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

I have to tell you, they are playing with fire. I think they have lit the match. Anyone who knows anything about economics--I happened to have majored in it in college, and I was a stockbroker for a period of time and know that uncertainty is the worst thing. The last time the Republicans tried this--and eventually they decided to back up and back off--it cost us, as I was saying, almost $19 billion over 10 years in taxpayer costs. America's credit rating was downgraded. Standard & Poor downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time in American history and the stock market sank. It dropped 2,000 points in July and August of 2011.

That is a wonderful policy, Republicans. Just keep it up. Who do you think you are helping? People who have 401(k)s? Everyone in America who is counting on the certainty of a government opening up every day in the greatest nation of the world? What are they accomplishing? The President had to cancel a trip to Asia that was so anticipated, giving China the upper hand there. You have to be kidding. Who are you helping?

Here is the deal. We have a health care program now called the Affordable Care Act. I will tell you the story of Leslie Foster, a 28- year-old freelance filmmaker in Hollywood. He told the Wall Street Journal--Leslie Foster--that he found a plan on Covered California that will cost him only $62 a month. Because Leslie earns $20,000 a year, federal assistance will pick up nearly three-quarters of the cost of his premium. Leslie says he hasn't had comprehensive health insurance since 2006.

I went home to be with the real people, to see the good that we can do. Is the Affordable Care Act perfect? No. Can we fix it? Yes. Let's talk about it. But don't try to scuttle a law that is so important for the people of my State and for this country--48 million people who are uninsured in America today. They have a shot at getting insurance for the first time. Don't take it away. Don't threaten default, and don't shut down this government--which you already did. Open it up.

The more I think about it, they pass a law to pay Federal employees who are sitting home. Tell me how that makes sense. They want to come to work and do their jobs. They are not happy sitting at home, whether they get a check or they don't. Open up the government. If you don't like certain functions, fight it out during the regular order. Patty Murray, the chair of our Budget Committee, she has asked--I think it is now 18 times, I could be wrong and I'll correct the record if I am wrong--she has asked them to go to conference and strike a deal. Let's sit down and talk.

Senator Cruz objected every time, and when he was not here Senator Lee objected. The far right wing does not want to solve this problem because they like the chaos. I don't know why. They ought to say it to Andrew Stryker. He is 34 years old. He lives in Los Angeles. He does freelance work. He pays a monthly premium of around $600 to stay on the plan from the job he left 4 years ago. He has high blood pressure and says he has been denied coverage in the past due to a preexisting condition. Last Tuesday Andrew told the Washington Post he picked out a silver plan on the Covered California exchange. It took him a while to sign up for coverage due to traffic and high demand on day 1. He said, `` . . . it will save me over $6,000. For that I would have waited all day.''

I think the Republicans should call up Mr. Stryker and say: Too bad. Too bad. You don't mind if we delay this another few years, do you?

And he would say: I sure would. I have a chance.

Last week San Franciscan Paul Cello told KQED that he selected a plan on the California exchange that will save him more than $300 a month compared to what he pays now in the high risk pool. ``It's like a whole 'nother world,'' he said. ``The coverage is better, no preexisting condition exclusions, I will get mental health coverage, so there's way more coverage than I had and I am going to be saving.''

Why doesn't John Boehner, who is known to shed tears, call up Paul Cello and say: Gee, Mr. Cello, we are really sorry. We want to delay your insurance for a year or 2 or forever. Where is the emotion Speaker Boehner has shown in many other cases. Where is the emotion for workers here who cannot get a paycheck, who are just praying to God the Republicans will vote on that clean CR and open up this government?

We know we have disagreements. That is fine. We are proud of the values that we bring. But it is not right to shut down the government and cause so much pain. It is not right to threaten default and havoc in the markets, and havoc all across the nation. It is not right. They are trying to shut down the government, and they might default because they don't like Medicare, ObamaCare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and they are stamping their feet and they are throwing a tantrum. Why are they inflicting so much suffering on our workers and on our families, but none on themselves?

Note to the Republicans: You are protecting your pay. Give it up during the shutdown.

Here in the Capitol last week we had a very frightening incident. It happened right outside my office. We are so thankful to the Capitol Police for rushing to save the day. A vehicle was being used as a weapon. They ran right to the trouble. A couple of them wound up in the hospital. They are not getting paid. What do you think that does to the ego of people, to their feeling of self-worth? And these Republicans can get all the protection they want, and so do we. This is the way we value people: Shut down the government and don't give them their pay? And by the way, they tried to take away their employer contribution to their health care which is equivalent to a huge pay cut. Talk about values, Speaker Boehner, why don't you get a little bit of a dose of Tip O'Neill? Tip O'Neill knew the magic of 218. He didn't care whether it was Republicans or Democrats who voted. He got things done. They have done nothing. Just because they control one-half of one-third of the government doesn't mean they get to decide everything. It doesn't work that way. We have to work together.

They don't get to pick and choose what laws to enforce. If they don't like them, then repeal them. Try to repeal the Clean Air Act. Bring it on. Try to repeal the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Super Fund Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, and the Consumer Protection Agency. Be honest. They don't even like Social Security, they don't like Medicare, and they don't like Medicaid. If they want to battle that out, bring it on. We will battle it out. But don't hold this whole country hostage and don't hurt millions of workers.

They did pass these little mini bills. We stand on the floor and talk about the horror stories. Oh, they passed a mini bill. I guess eventually they will send enough bills over here to open the whole government. Why don't they just open the government?

We cry for those people who can't get into NIH trials. They have a mini bill, but they didn't open the CDC and people are not working to catch the next epidemic. They didn't do anything to restart food inspections, and Lord knows we lose thousands of people a year from eating poisoned food. They will not open the EPA, and we have kids in Los Angeles, as we speak, who are very sick and ill with bloody noses.

There is a picture in the paper I can show everyone. The red over here is the result of bloody noses from little children who are living near an oil and gas operation. The day I read about it, I called up the EPA. They said they would be on it in 5 minutes, and then the government shut down. They don't care over there. Even though 75 percent of the people strongly support the EPA, they want to get rid of it. Bring it on but don't hold this country hostage.

There are 110 FAA safety inspectors in southern California who were furloughed, 830 Bureau of Land Management employees were sent home, and small businesses are not getting paid. We don't even know what our unemployment rate is in the greatest country in the world because the Labor Department had to send home the people who calculate that number.

In Santa Monica a plane crashed on Sunday evening and four people were killed. The NTSB cannot investigate--that is the National Transportation Safety Board--because the investigators are off the job. They took what

they learned, put it in a vault, and when the government reopens, they will take it out. In the meantime, who knows why it happened. Maybe it is a defect in the plane that we could fix for all planes. Maybe it is something on the runway. We don't know. Maybe it was pilot error. All of this needs to be discussed and looked at.

What they are doing is disgraceful, and it is unprecedented. I have looked back, and there have been shutdowns, but most lasted 1 or 2 or 3 days, but none of them were about repealing a law, let alone a signature law of a President--Democratic or Republican.

The Republicans have to wake up and smell reality. They had an election and a lot of it was about the Affordable Care Act. They lost. Amazingly, the Affordable Care Act--they dubbed it ObamaCare--is based on a Republican idea of individual responsibility. We actually got the idea from Republicans and from a Republican Governor named Mitt Romney. They ran away from it because they don't care for this President. Get over it. You lost. There are people in this Senate who ran on saying they would make the Affordable Care Act better, but they weren't going to repeal it.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission furloughed 600 employees. The government can't regulate the markets for contracts in oil, corn, and metals. Commissioner Bart Chilton said:

Taking our cops off the beat for even a few days could have

disastrous impacts on these markets that consumers depend

upon.

We talked about the CDC. They furloughed 9,000 workers who respond to outbreaks such as salmonella. This is happening at a time when an outbreak of hepatitis A has affected 79 people in California.

We are dealing with a self-inflicted wound upon this Nation, a government shutdown that is unnecessary. We cannot allow this to continue. So I say to Speaker Boehner, who is the architect of this shutdown, stop playing games with the lives of Americans--our workers, our families, and our children. Do your job. Open the government. Let the House vote. It is pretty simple.

We have sent a bill over there which funds the government. We have made a commitment to them that after they pass that and the debt ceiling, every single thing is on the table.

I was thinking the other day that if you are a teacher and you get hired in a school and the school opens for work at 9 a.m. every morning, you have to be in the classroom at 9 a.m. in the morning in order to keep your job. If you weren't in your classroom at 9 a.m. in the morning and decided that you wanted to do something different such as come in at 11 a.m., you would be fired.

Our job is to keep the government running and pay the bills we have incurred. We don't get to pick and choose or decide that all of a sudden in the middle of everything we are going to cancel out a law that passed 3\1/2\ years ago.

This is so bad that the Republican candidate for Governor in Virginia has said: Stop it. Open the government and then debate health care.

The good news is Speaker Boehner could change his mind, bring up our bill in a few minutes' time. I know how it works. I spent 10 years in the House. It is real easy. They take the bill, go to the rules committee, talk about how they are going to allow one or two amendments or none, and they could then actually take it up, pass it, and send it to the President. What would that do? It would reopen the government tomorrow. It would keep the government open for 6 weeks while we debate the bigger issues, and then we should raise the debt ceiling so we can pay the bills we have already incurred.

It is so good to go home to your State and talk to people who are looking at us and thinking: Why would anyone want to close down this country because they don't like the fact that our families can get health insurance? They don't understand it. They are pondering it, and they are coming up with a tilt.

So, Speaker Boehner, you are a man; obviously, you have deep emotions. Your policies and that of your party are hurting people, hurting children, hurting families, hurting the economy, hurting the country, and all you have to do is bring up a clean continuing resolution that we passed over here, thanks to Republicans who allowed us to bring it up and pass it, and pass it over there. Let's get through this. Let's restore some faith that this country can function once again.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.