Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that as if in executive session, the nomination of Arun Madhavan Kumar, of California, to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, received in the Senate on October 7, 2013, be jointly referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Mr. President, I understand there are three measures at the desk due for a second reading.

I object to any further proceedings with respect to these measures en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 8, 2013; 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; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for debate only until 12:30 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; and that the Senate recess from 12:30 until 2:15 to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Reserving the right to object, I just want to say I so strongly support my colleague from Connecticut. I so oppose what is going on here with the Republicans. Time and time again they have had a chance to

open this government, and they say no. We have the votes in the House. The Senate passed it. We sent it over there. Let's make sure we do what is right for the people. That means opening this government. We show up to work. We have two things to do to earn our pay; one is keep the government open. Just because people are going to get health insurance and it bothers some Republicans, sorry you lost that battle 3\1/2\ years ago and then in the election.

So we have to keep the government running, and we have to pay the bills that we all incurred. They are threatening chaos. I am so appreciative the Senator from Connecticut came down and gave another chance to our Republican friends to let them join us and do our job.

I won't be long, I say to my colleagues. I wish to thank our Leader Reid for bringing back a sense of history, for putting this fight over the new health care law into context.

I did some research on what Republicans said about Social Security when it came up before in the Senate and the House: This is the end of the world. It was socialism. It was going to destroy mankind. I have the quotes. They are in the Record.

No, Social Security proved to be the most successful antipoverty program in America. People love it. But they keep trying to take it away.

Under George W. Bush they tried to privatize it and we Democrats stopped it. Then you go look to the 1960s when Lyndon Johnson talked about Medicare and the fact that our grandmas and grandpas at that time were being supported by their children because there was no health insurance available. This was the end of the world. Even Bob

Dole in the 1990s said, I was there fighting against Medicare. Bob Dole, a wonderful man, a Republican: I was fighting against socialism. And now even tea party members put signs up: Don't touch my Medicare.

So now we have the next reform, the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have called it ObamaCare. The President embraces it. In California today people are so excited. Millions of Californians who are uninsured will have the chance to get affordable health care. And, I might say, you go to coveredca.com, and you see the platinum plans that are the more expensive plans, you see the bronze plans, the least expensive, the silver plan. Who is going up there? Not people who already have insurance--it is about 80 percent--but those who don't. And in my State, the working poor will have a chance to get a Medicaid card.

Thank God we have a Governor and a legislature with compassion, unlike other States where the Governors are saying, No, we don't care; we think it is going to cost too much. Well, the fact is we know, and the reason the Affordable Care Act ObamaCare saves a lot of money over time is because people get the health care they need and they get it early.

We have a horrible day here today. I have 169,000 Federal employees, and about 80,000 of them are going to get furloughed. These are hard- working, good people who work for the Border Patrol, who work for the FBI, who work for NASA, who work for the National Park Service, who keep our Federal buildings clean and open, scientists, caseworkers who do important Social Security cases, Medicare cases, food inspectors, small business loan officers so important to the small business community--they are going to pack up and go home. To my Republican friends who brought this Republican shutdown, these are hard-working people.

I don't have one Republican on my bill who would take away our pay in a shutdown. Not one Republican. But they are ready to take away everybody else's pay. As a matter of fact, yesterday--to a person--they voted to take away the employer contribution from their own staff for the health care. I couldn't believe it. By the way, they don't need a law to do it. Senator Vitter's bill: Take away your health care--you don't need to take that employer's share. Give it back to the government. Call in your staff if you think they deserve this treatment and tell them you are going to reduce their salaries, and send the check back to the government. You don't need legislation to do it. That is how mean-spirited it is around here. So we face a nonsensical shutdown.

I want to talk about exactly where we are. The House sent us a 6-week bill that keeps the government going at certain levels of spending. Then the Republicans say, well, the Democrats won't compromise. I have news for the Republicans. We don't like those numbers in that continuing resolution. We think they are way too low. We think they are hurting the economic recovery. We see the deficit's down by 50 percent. We don't have to bring about this austerity. We think it is hurting jobs and the economy, but that is not enough for them.

They have a victory on the number, but they want to add other things to the budget that have nothing to do with the budget and have everything to do with their obsession with repealing health care reform, just like the Republican Party has had an obsession for years. I forgot to say, remember Newt Gingrich's famous line on Medicare, ``It is going to wither on the vine'' and Paul Ryan's budget, which destroyed Medicare as we know it.

It is our main responsibility to keep the government going, to pay our bills. Instead of sending us a clean bill, they send us a bill with lower numbers than we want, we accept the numbers, and then they tack on these mean-spirited amendments to hurt people--with the exception of the repeal of the medical device tax, which would blow a $30 billion hole in our deficit. They repeal it. They have no way of making up for that money that would be lost to the Treasury.

I could not believe it. Yesterday, their first take was to take away women's health care. Three of us went up to the gallery and we said: You continue your war on women. They actually, in the House, repealed an existing law that gives women cancer screening, gestational diabetes screening, and making sure they have the correct supplies and the counseling to breast-feed their children, and birth control. They actually took that out, repealed it. We went up to the gallery. They left that little thing alone. They gave up on that.

But what are they doing now? Now they are saying their own employees have no right to an employer contribution. This is mean-spirited. This is hurtful. Send us a clean CR for 6 weeks and then vote to go to the budget conference, as Senator Murray has asked. But Senator Cruz keeps appearing on the scene and objecting to appointing conferees to deal with the yearly budget because he says he doesn't want to have them discuss the debt. Who is he to say what you can discuss or not discuss? The last time I checked, there is free speech in this country, including in a conference committee.

That leads me to think they are going to play even worse games with the debt ceiling, about which Ronald Reagan--who asked for it and got, 18 times, an increase in the debt ceiling--said even thinking about defaulting is a horrible and dangerous thing. No President has had this kind of difficulty. They are obsessed with the health care law and they are obsessed with hurting this President.

Let's face facts. I have served with five Presidents; three of them were Republicans. Did I agree with everything Ronald Reagan believed in? The Presiding Officer and I served in those years together. Remember those days of the nuclear weapons proliferation? We had our battles and, yes, we made a symbolic vote once in a while not to raise the debt ceiling. That is fine. But we never purposely brought down the government, ever--ever. The last time Newt Gingrich and the Republicans did it, it was a disaster and they have done it again.

I listened to the majority leader. The majority leader said the Republican leader's tale and his spin is similar to the book ``1984.'' Let me just say, it is ``Alice in Wonderland.'' It is not accurate.

Let's pass the bill we sent over, the clean CR for 6 weeks. Let's go to a budget conference. Let's resolve our problems. This is too great a country to have us suffer like this, a self-inflicted wound that does not have to be done.

I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I wish to say to both of my friends, coming from a State that has experienced too many moments like the one you are going through, I have never seen anything quite like this in terms of flooding. But we have the most devastating fires, droughts, floods, mudslides, and earthquakes and the rest.

I wanted to be supportive of what you are doing. We all need to come together and help each other here. So I will do whatever I can to make sure that happens.

I ask unanimous consent that when my friend Senator Bennet completes his time I be recognized.

My question to my friend is: Is it not critical that we avert a government shutdown? Because if we go into a shutdown phase, people who want to apply for help--businesses and all the rest--are going to be experiencing far more pain. This is just a terrible time to even consider a government shutdown. We have so much we have to do. I wonder if my friend had thought about that when he voted to keep the government open?

Let me say to my friend from Colorado he is right about a picture being so powerful. Having shown my share of those types of photos, I think the Senator underscores why it is important to have a national government. He and his colleague from Colorado makes the point, as did the Senators from New Jersey, New York, and California-- regardless of party--that many times these natural disasters are just too much for any one State, and that is why we need a national government that works well, not one that teeters on the brink of shutdown because political parties get into these partisan disputes and seem to lose their way.

As one who feels we have a very clear path ahead, there is no reason for us to add to the uncertainty the people in Colorado face right now because we don't have that particular funding laid out clearly at this point. We don't need to add a layer of fear that this government is not going to function. So I wish to thank my friend.

But I will say that we did vote 54 to 44 in the Senate to keep the government open and to make sure we don't get involved in clashes about other matters and add it to the resolution that keeps this government going.

Listen, there is no shortage of arguments we could have. Even within our own parties there are different views on many issues: how best to bring this economy back, how best to reform education, how best to have a very strong, lean military--we have arguments about all these things--how to deliver health care. All these things are worthy of debate, but they should remain separate and apart from our basic functions, one of which is to keep the government running and doing the things government does, and the second is to pay our bills, which requires us to make sure the debt limit is raised. When we see games being played in these areas, we know we are in deep trouble.

I see our leader Senator Reid is on the floor. With his leadership we passed a bill to keep the government open. All John Boehner has to do, as Speaker of the House--and I know the House well. I served there for 10 years--is to put our bill on the floor and let the Members vote. That is democracy. We don't have to have every Republican support it. We don't have to have every Democrat support it. Just put the bill on the floor.

When I served in the House I served with many different Speakers. I have to say, in my time, Tip O'Neill was the greatest. Why was Tip O'Neill great and why can John Boehner learn from Tip O'Neill? Because Tip O'Neill knew what his function was. It was to keep this country going. It was to give a sense of certainty and calm to the people that even though we could debate all kinds of things, including whether to go to war or how to deal with many problems, we would keep the government going. We would pay our debts.

When Tip O'Neill was Speaker, Republican Ronald Reagan asked Tip O'Neill to increase the debt ceiling many times. Over the period Reagan was President, he asked to raise the debt ceiling 18 times. Did all of us agree the debt ceiling should be lifted? No. A few voted no, and that was fine. No one played games. Ronald Reagan was very clear on the debt ceiling. He said even any talk about not raising it was a problem for this economy, and he

said it way more eloquently than I, being the great communicator. He said even the thought of a default was dangerous for our economy. Yet here we have Republicans, in the House in particular, marching down that path and also marching down the path right now to shut down this government. We are just a few short days away.

I don't know about the Chair, but I know I did have a meeting with my staff to explain what could happen. People act as if a government shutdown doesn't mean pain. It is a dangerous game and it has devastating consequences for our families and not only for the people who rely on their work for their country--whether they are serving on the military or civilian side of the Defense establishment or in the Social Security Administration or the Medicare administration or the FBI or the food inspectors or the highway inspectors.

I have to say, Republicans keep saying: We don't want to shut down the government. Believe me, we don't want to shut down the government. We just want to stop the Affordable Care Act. You tried 42 times. You had an election over it. Give it up. This is a democracy. Run candidates who want to repeal it. That is fine. That is fine. We had that in the last election and President Obama won. I know people aren't happy about it. I understand that. I wasn't happy when Republicans beat my Democratic candidates for President. I wasn't happy, but I didn't shut down the government. I didn't demand their signature accomplishments be repealed. I lived with it, and I am not the only one. We all did. We all accepted it.

That is democracy. You have an election. There are winners and losers. Suck it up. Stop complaining. Go register your friends. Tell them to vote against Barbara Boxer. Go tell them to vote against the Democrats. Go do it. That is fine. That is what elections are for. But once the election is over--and in this last case it was a central issue--work with us to make it better.

Senator Cardin and I were on the floor the other day pointing out we voted against the prescription drug benefit for Medicare for basically two reasons; one, we thought it was going to cost too much money for the government because in there it said Medicare could not negotiate for lower drug prices. So it was a giveaway to the drug companies. They couldn't negotiate for lower drug prices. Also, there was a great big doughnut hole so after you got a certain amount of drugs, you got no benefit at all, and seniors were risking their lives to get through that period of time.

We didn't try to repeal the prescription drug benefit; we tried to fix it. Here is the great news. In the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, we fixed the doughnut hole. We are closing it. Now senior citizens are not going to have to cut their pills in little pieces while they wait for that doughnut hole period of time to pass.

So there are a lot of pathways forward for the Republicans in the House. Follow history and tradition, which says we have two basic things we must do: keep this government open and pay the bills that we incur. Simple. It is not complicated. If anyone tells you it is complicated, laugh, because it isn't.

If you are a family and you incur bills, you pay them or you are a deadbeat. In the old days, people used to go to jail. We stopped that. Now we have bankruptcy filings. Pay your bills, Republicans. Pay your bills. Keep the government going--a very simple path. Take the bill we just passed. It is neutral. It has no policy in it. It keeps the spending going. We haven't added any of our wonderful things we would like to see and do. We kept it clean. Put that bill on the floor--it passed 54 to 44 here--and vote on it. People who want to shut down the government will vote no. That is their right. People who want to keep the government open will vote yes. There will be Republicans on either side. There will be Democrats on either side.

What we hear happening is they are going to bring it back and they are going to put more of their favorite things in it. Who knows what they will pick. They have a lot. They want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency. They want to stop us from cleaning up the air and the water. They want to stop us from addressing the issue of coal ash piling up all over the country. That is what they want to do, from what I read in the paper. Then they want to delay this health care bill, just as it is about ready to kick in.

We have been down this road before. We know what happens when the government shuts down. I asked my staff to go back, to go to the press and look at the stories. I am not speaking make believe. I am speaking history. When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans shut down the government in the 1990s, we all know what happened. It hurt our country. It hurt our economy. It hurt our seniors, our veterans, our businesses. It hurt anyone who even had 100 shares of stock in the stock market. It hurt the American people.

Mark Zandi, an economist who advised Republican Members of the Senate, predicts a shutdown lasting just a few days would reduce our gross domestic product by two-tenths of a point.

How does that help us when our economic growth is curtailed by a shutdown? How does it help our economy when more than 169,000 Federal employees in my State and many more nationwide are furloughed without pay? It will be more than 1 million Federal employees and 169,000 in California. These are real people, with real families, with real bills to pay who get up and go to work for their Nation. How does that help our economy?

We know the last shutdown cost the Federal Government $1.4 billion. If we factor in inflation, that is $2 billion, and that was for 2 weeks. A 2-week shutdown cost $2 billion. Great, just what we need to do--throw money out the window. Because we can afford it, right? No.

Agencies are making their shutdown plans. Federal employees are preparing to be furloughed. You know what happens when you get scared you will not get a paycheck? You pull in. You don't go out to the movies and you don't go out for dinner because you are worried. That has a trickle-down effect on small businesses.

How does it help our seniors when the Social Security Administration, during a shutdown, cannot process benefits for retirees? What happens if someone is widowed and she needs the help from Social Security to get those burial benefits she is entitled to? Is that making the Republicans excited over there, to hurt our seniors with Medicare, with Social Security?

Medicare can't take any new patients because they won't be able to. In the last shutdown, 10,000 people a day were turned away. People who were waiting to turn 65 so they could get their Medicare card called up Medicare, and no one is there. Sorry. Oh, that is a lovely thing to do to your mothers and dads, I say to my colleagues over there. Lovely.

How does it help our veterans and their families when a new disability claim or GI bill claim cannot be processed? I can tell you, it hurts them. There is already a huge backlog. This is just what we don't need, a shutdown, where the backlog of claims gets worse and worse. We all say we love our veterans, and I believe it when we say that. Don't shut down the government and hurt our veterans.

Republicans say they care about small businesses more than Democrats. How does it help our small businesses when they can't bid on government contracts or get small business loans through the SBA? I tell you, it hurts them. How is it going to help the more than 14,000 government contractors in California who may not get paid for their work on time? They will be hurt badly. They have bills to pay, they have employees to pay, and they won't be able to pay them. If you ask the average working person how close they are to seriously being homeless, not being able to pay the rent, it is only a few weeks for a lot of our people.

I would ask, how does it help our health in this country when the EPA cannot clean up toxic superfund sites? Those sites harm our families, they harm our children, and they will be shut down.

How does it help our fight against cancer and Alzheimer's when the NIH cannot enroll patients in drug trials? If you ask people who the real enemies are, a lot of times they will say we worry about someone in the family getting a heart attack, getting a stroke, getting Alzheimer's. How does it help our families when the NIH can't enroll patients in drug trials and the CDC can no longer monitor new avian flu cases?

And tell me, Republicans who want to shut down this government, how

does it help our businesses like our restaurateurs and people who run hotels when tourist visas cannot be processed and people who are waiting to come to America to stay in our hotels are turned away? That is bad for this economy.

How does it help a family buy a house when the FHA can't process a loan for the American dream of owning a home? But that is what is going to happen.

And tell me, how does it help a single mom when she can't get help from HHS in collecting child support to feed her family? How does it help the families in Colorado, their homes and roads and bridges destroyed, when the National Guard--we just learned from Senator Udall--cannot start their work until the government reopens? It is downright dangerous.

How does it help our schoolkids who come to Washington to learn about our great Nation, they go to the Mall, and they can't get in any museums?

And do we want to hear the ultimate outrage? These Senate and House Members who want to shut down the government will get paid during a government shutdown that they caused. These Senate and House Members who want to shut down the government--they personally will still get paid. Their families will have a paycheck during a government shutdown.

In March of 2011, the Senate passed S. 388, the Boxer-Casey bill, to prevent Members of Congress from getting paid in the event of a government shutdown or a default. It is a very simple bill:

Members of Congress and the President shall not receive

basic pay for any period in which there is more than a 24-

hour lapse in appropriations for any Federal agency or

department as a result of a failure to enact a regular

appropriations bill or a continuing resolution; or if the

Federal Government is unable to make payments or meet

obligations because the debt limit has been reached.

Our bill, I am proud to say, passed the Senate. Senator Casey and I wrote a letter--signed by 14 of our colleagues--to Speaker Boehner and the Republicans, asking that they bring up and pass our bill. In that letter we said:

Members who want to shut down the government should not

continue to receive a paycheck while the rest of the Nation

suffers the consequences. Members of Congress and the

President should be treated no differently than every other

Federal employee. We too should have to face the consequences

of our actions.

Speaker Boehner had time to put lots of other things on the docket, but not our bill. So we introduced a new one. I am here to say we have a bill that is called S. 55. It says the same thing, we are not going to get paid if we don't do the two basic functions we have to do: keep this government running, and raise the debt ceiling.

I want to ask: How is it that Republicans, who are urging a shutdown of the government by virtue of their votes--and we have them in the Senate--why are they not cosponsors of our bill? They don't care if the government is shut down. Get on my bill. I invite Senator Cruz and Senator Lee. They spoke for 21 hours. That took a lot of strength. Maybe they have strength left to pick up the phone and call me and go on my bill so they won't get paid, because as of now they will. They want to protect their pay. They want to protect their families.

Some of them even suggest taking away the employer contribution from our staff, that is treated like almost every other employee with a big employer, an employer contribution to health care. They want to take it away, but they want to get paid during a shutdown.

So pick up the phone, Senator Cruz, and call me. I will be delighted to hear from you, and let me put you on my bill because that would be helpful. Then we can e-mail all of your friends and tell them to get everybody else on the bill. And maybe, just maybe, we can make a little sacrifice if things go wrong.

By the way, there is no reason for things to go wrong. We just passed a good bill, a clean bill. We know we are going to have arguments over health care, we are going to have arguments over Social Security, we are going to have arguments over the best way to move forward with sequester. That is fine. There is a time and a place. You don't put those issues on a continuing resolution to fund the government. You don't put those issues on a debt ceiling and, as Ronald Reagan said, put our economy in a very dangerous and precarious situation.

If you listened to the speeches of my colleagues, the 21-hour speech, and if you take away the time that was devoted to Dr. Seuss, most of it was about the Affordable Care Act. So I think we ought to take a look at the Affordable Care Act. This is the terrible piece of legislation that certain colleagues of the Republican side say is so terrible they are willing to shut the government down:

Right now, because of the Affordable Care Act, 3 million young adults are on their parents' plan. Isn't that terrible? Three million of them can stay on their parents' plan. I want to know why they would shut down the government and kick those youngsters off their parents' plan, because that is what they will do. They don't tell you that, but we won't be able to enforce this law. We won't have the funds. They would kick these kids off their parents' plan because, frankly, the law would in effect be suspended. And if an insurance company said, We are not going to do this anymore, those youngsters are out of luck. So that is the first question I ask them: Why do you want to kick 3 million youngsters off their parents' plan?

Now 71 million Americans are getting free preventive care, such as checkups, birth control, and immunizations. Now when you don't fund this bill, delay it, or fool around with it, forget this. So now 71 million people who could have gotten immunized don't get immunized, a good bunch of them, because they can't afford it--under the Affordable Care Act it is free--then they get sick and then others catch what they get. Tell me how that makes America a better place. I am waiting to hear. No one has told me how it makes America a better place when we kick children off their parents' plan or we take away immunization or birth control or checkups from our people.

I mentioned this before. Senator King was talking about how when he was a youngster he worked here and he had health insurance, and the health insurance allowed him to get a free medical checkup. He got a free checkup, and he found out that he had a melanoma, a mole that had gone cancerous. It was very serious. He was a youngster. This is a long time ago for him. As a result of that, he is with us today, living and well and here to fight for health care. That is a story we should think about. Because he went to the doctor, the doctor looked at him and found this mole, he got that mole removed, and he is alive.

Tell me why Republicans want to take away free preventive care from 71 million Americans. That is what the Affordable Care Act does. They call it ObamaCare because they polled it, and when they say ObamaCare, it is less popular. So I will call it ObamaCare. I thought the President was funny when he said that after this law is out there a few years and people like it, the Republicans will stop calling it ObamaCare, a moment of levity that had a lot of truth to it.

This is another benefit the Republicans would delay, stop, and put in jeopardy. They will even shut the government down. They don't like the fact that 17 million children with preexisting conditions such as asthma and diabetes can no longer be denied coverage. So I have to ask them, What is it you have against kids? I have met the parents. If a child had diabetes, if a child had asthma, the insurance company said, Sorry, you are out of luck. Because of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, children can no longer be denied coverage.

I have met these little kids who have benefited, who have gotten the care, who are doing well because the moms and dads don't have to wait until they are gasping for air or have an absolute breakdown and then they have to rush them to the emergency room where they are patched up and don't get the kind of care they need.

Here is another thing. I don't understand why the Republicans feel it is a good thing for insurance companies to be able to cancel your health insurance when you get sick. That is what used to happen before ObamaCare, before the Affordable Care Act. Remember, this law has been in effect for 3 years, so all these benefits have gone into play. No more lifetime limits.

I remember once looking at our insurance policy many years ago that my

husband got through his employer, and we thought it was a great plan. Then we looked at the little print that said when you reach a cap of $250,000, no more health insurance. Anyone who has the misfortune to get a serious condition, a disease, can bump up against that cap fast and you have no more insurance until, you pray to God, you are 65 and you can get Medicare. We immediately said we have to look for a different policy that has no caps--and of course it costs more. Under ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, no more lifetime limits, no more annual limits. The Republicans are so distraught at these reforms they are even willing to shut down the government. They are willing to delay ObamaCare. They are willing to defund ObamaCare. They are willing to repeal ObamaCare.

Let me tell you, this is a pattern. I am going to tell you the pattern. I am going to show you what happened when a Democratic President in the 1960s came up with the idea for Medicare. I am going to tell you what the Republicans said then. This is not something that just happened to the Republican Party. They have been fighting these kinds of benefits, I think, for decades. They fought Social Security in the 1930s. But I will go to Medicare. Dick Armey said in 1995--he was Republican House majority leader. He had Eric Cantor's job. He said Medicare is ``a program I would have no part of in a free world.''

Earth to senior citizens: Wake up. The Republican leader of the House in 1995 said Medicare is ``a program I would have no part of in a free world.'' That same year, after leading an effort to raise premiums and costs for senior citizens, Newt Gingrich predicted that Medicare was ``going to wither on the vine.''

So when you hear these Republicans rail against ObamaCare, they railed against Medicare. They railed against Social Security. This is history. This is why there is a difference in the parties.

Listen to this. In 1965, this is what Senator Bob Dole said on the floor. Remember he bragged about this in 1996 during the Medicare fight. He said ``I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare, because we knew it wouldn't work in 1965.''

Really? The Republicans knew that Medicare wouldn't work in 1965. Here it is, 2013, and people are saying: Don't you mess with my Medicare. Don't you touch it. Whether they are tea partiers or rightwing Republicans, moderate Republicans, liberal Republicans, Democrats--from left to right, they all say don't mess with my Medicare. Look at where the Republicans were. Don't forget, Paul Ryan's budget destroys Medicare. It would never look the same if he had his way.

I will even go back further in history and show you some of the things that the Republicans said about Medicare when it was brought to us by the Democrats. Sixty percent of the Republicans in the Senate voted against it, and one Representative, Durwood Hall of Missouri said:

We cannot stand idly by now, as the nation is urged to

embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine

--that's what he called Medicare--

the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient

is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.

This man had it wrong. People love their Medicare. People tell me they are down on their hands and knees, praying to get the Medicare card, hoping they can hold out. Republicans have had it wrong. Why should we trust them and believe them when they say the Affordable Care Act is no good when we already see how many people it is helping?

Then there was Senator Milward Simpson, way back when, in the 1960s. He said:

I am disturbed about the effect this legislation would have

upon our economy and upon our private insurance system.

He didn't have to be concerned. Medicare has worked beautifully. In the Affordable Care Act we make it better. We fix the prescription drug benefit. We make sure that our people on Medicare can have free checkups and immunizations. We strengthened it.

Let's look at Medicare's success. Before Medicare became law, the majority of seniors had no health insurance. Today nearly all seniors, 50 million, are receiving guaranteed health care through Medicare, and 80 percent of folks on Medicare believe the program is working. If you look over history, over the years Medicare has been more successful than private insurers at holding down health care costs.

Let me sum up. What we saw here today is some good news. Working with our Republicans, we managed to bring up a bill and modify it and make it clean, strip it of any kind of debate, and fund the government until the middle of November. That will give Senator Murray time to sit down with her counterparts and try to get a long-term solution.

If you want a long-term solution to our deficit and debt, you have to have a budget. Yet Republicans over here have stopped us from going to conference. Once this is done we can have a conference move forward, a debate go forward. Let's keep these arguments where they belong, which is separate and apart from keeping the government going. Let's keep these separate and apart from paying the bills we have already incurred.

I also want to say this. If you listen to Republicans, you would think this deficit has gone up under President Obama. President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit. It is now down. It has been cut in half. But if you listen to them, you think: Oh my God, everything is awful. I took a look at the charts. I took a look at deficits under Democratic and Republican Presidents. Oh my God, I am so proud to be a Democrat. Under Democratic Presidents we have had surpluses. Under Bill Clinton we had surpluses. As soon as the Republicans took over, President George W. Bush said, I am going to have a party. I am going to put 2 wars on the credit card. I am going to give the biggest tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires. Do know what happened? We had a crisis. Not only the worst recession since the Great Depression, but the deficit skyrocketed.

All those supply-side economists were proven wrong. Give tax cuts to the mightiest among us and the deficit will go down. That is voodoo economics, as it was once called by a really good Republican President. That is voodoo economics.

You are going to hear all kinds of things today in these speeches. But history is history. Bill Clinton had the surplus. George Bush turned it into the worst deficit in history. Barack Obama cut that in half. He rescued us with the Democrats and some brave Republicans who voted for economic stimulus--thank the Lord. And we are getting out of this mess.

Now we have Republicans, on the far right in the House, who are holding our country hostage because they do not like the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. They voted 42 times to repeal it. They are ignoring the fact that we had an election about it, and they are ignoring the fact that they do not run the Senate or the White House. They run one-third of the government. Fine. God bless them. But they have to work with us, not against us. We need to work together.

I served 10 proud years over there. I have never seen a situation where you are stopped from making any progress because 20 people belong to the tea party and are threatening the Speaker. The Speaker has to act like the Speaker of the House. He is not the Speaker of the Republicans, he is the Speaker of the House. Take our bill that just passed and put it on the floor. Some will vote aye, some will vote nay. Let's see what happens.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of people who are very worried today. They are worried that this government is going to shut down. They are worried that when they call about their Social Security check, if they have a problem, no one will be there. They are worried, if they have a problem, and they want to sign up for Medicare--no one will be there. They are concerned that their FBI agents are furloughed. They are concerned.

Maybe this concern may not sound like a big deal, but they saved for 2 years to take their kids to the Capitol, and they want to take them to all the great museums and the national parks and they are closed.

Why is this happening? Self-inflicted wound, self- inflicted wound.

Do your job. For God's sake, don't get paid if you can't keep the government open. Sign on in this body to S. 55 and say I won't get paid if the government shuts down. Tell Speaker Boehner to do that. They did it over there

for the budget. They said if we didn't pass a budget we should not get paid. We did pass a budget. Now they won't let us go to conference and finish the work.

What a mess we are in--self-inflicted--because people are in denial around here that there was an election. It was about health care. It was about being moderate. It was about working together. It was about compromise. It was not about who is the Presidential candidate who could lead us into the darkness and despair of complete warfare.

Let's end that warfare. We showed we could do it today. I thank my Republican colleagues who voted to allow us to offer our amendment. I appreciate it so much. I know they are getting yelled at. They should be praised. But it shows, right here in this Senate, that we can come together. We may not like our options or our choices. Believe me, I do not like the amount of money we are spending to run the government. It is really hurting my people back home. But I am not going to shut down the government about it.

Madam President, you are such a great new addition to the Senate. I am disappointed that you are not able to unleash your legislative prowess and move us forward, but we will get past this if we can work together.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I listened to colleagues predicting doom and gloom, and it brings back what I have read about what happened when Medicare was brought to this country by the Democrats and what happened when Social Security was brought to this body and to the House after the Great Depression.

I am going to go into that in a little bit, but somebody said this earlier and it reminded me that one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

The Republicans in the House have voted 42 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act or to defund it. Health care reform has taken years and years to do, and we finally got it done. Millions of Americans are on the cusp of getting health insurance for the first time.

Republicans are desperately trying to block this from happening. Senator Reid couldn't be more clear: We are not going to delay health care for the people of this great Nation. We are not going to go back to the days when people with a preexisting condition were left to die without health care. We are not going back there. Yet it continues.

The Republicans are so adamant about it that a very large group of them are threatening to shut down the government of this great country. Again, it is not like they didn't do this before. The Republicans did this before. It was a disaster for the people. People got hurt. They didn't get paid. Business was disrupted, Social Security and Medicare were disrupted, veterans' benefits were disrupted, and parks were shut down. People were hurt as a result of that, and it cost a fortune for the taxpayers. But somehow Republicans feel they can play games, and I think it is a shame.

My colleague Senator Cruz spoke for a very long time and said he would speak until he dropped. He said that over and over: I will speak until I drop. If he were to drop and suffered some kind of health episode, which he apparently was willing to risk, he would have had health care because he is insured. If he had to be lifted off the floor of the Senate and driven to a nearby hospital, Senator Cruz would have had great health care. Why does he want to stop that for millions and millions of hard-working Americans? Only he can answer that.

I could only say that as I listened to some of his interviews, it sounds like what he is feeling in his heart is if this goes into effect, the people might like it and then woe is us. Because there is an ideological split here in the Senate where we have Senators and House Members who don't think there is any role for the Federal Government to play in making people's lives better. Some say military spending, fine; highway spending, fine. But when it comes to lifting people up and giving them a quality of life and helping to do that, oh, no.

So Senator Ted Cruz is fortunate. If he talked until he dropped on the floor, he would have had the best health care, he would have been on his feet and super fine. There are a lot of people out there who are dropping because they put off going to the doctor because they have a condition and they have no insurance, and when they drop they have to go to an emergency room where they can be patched up--and by the way, taxpayers pay for that.

So here is the thing. We have the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans call ObamaCare, so that is fine--ObamaCare, Affordable Care Act, whatever we want to call it. It is based on a Republican-suggested model of

health care where we use private insurance, we go to an exchange, and there is a lot of competition. I am excited about it, frankly, because in my home State of California, we are on board: coveredca.com. People type in coveredca.com, and they find out how they can get health care. Some people will apply and get a Medicaid card, the working poor. The middle class will be able to move forward and go to the exchanges, and many will get a subsidy to help them if they are in the middle class.

Here is the thing that really shocks me. Republicans act as if this health care bill, this Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, just came down off the ceiling and dropped on the floor and became law. It took a long time. Senator Baucus worked and worked and worked. We took many Republican amendments. We passed the bill. It became the law of the land 3 years ago.

They took it to the Supreme Court and said it was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court said it was constitutional. And now that it is about to go into play, Republicans are willing to shut the government down to stop it.

It was the centerpiece of the 2012 election. We all know that.

Mitt Romney said: If I am President, I am getting rid of that law.

The people of the country said: OK. What are you going to put in its place?

Well, let's see. We will allow insurance to go across State lines.

Well, what does that do for me if I have a preexisting condition?

They wanted to replace it with nothing. The American people are smart. It doesn't mean this law is perfect and we can't make it better, but let me tell my colleagues, many of us served under many Presidents. I am looking at my colleague from Maryland who served a long time in the House. I served with five Presidents, a couple of whom I didn't agree with, and I did everything I could to fight against the legislation they liked that I felt was bad. But once it passed, I didn't try to shut down the government. I tried to work with everybody, and I am not an exception. That is what we used to do around here, all of us. Suddenly, it is: My way or the highway. I am taking my Teddy bear, my blankie, and I am going home because I don't like the health reform act. It doesn't suit me.

Some of them are so angry about it, they are trying to take away the employer contribution from their own staff. What an outrage--hard- working people who love their country, who work here.

Now, let me tell my colleagues, Earth to the Republicans: A, you lost the election not only for President but in the Senate, where colleagues who supported the Affordable Care Act got elected; B, President Obama was reelected, Mitt Romney lost. Health care reform was a major issue on the campaign trail. So wake up, smell the roses, put a smile on your face, and know you tried, but don't shut down the government. Enough already.

I wish to spend some time showing my colleagues how the Affordable Care Act is already working, so I have some charts to go over quickly.

In my State over 1 million Californians are already newly insured. This includes in my State 400,000 young adults who are now on their parents' policies. If the Republicans have their way and they defund or repeal ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, what is going to happen to those young adults? They will be kicked off of their parents' policies. Is this why Senator Cruz stood on the floor for hours and hours until he would drop--to hurt young adults, 3 million of them nationwide?

Seventy-one million Americans are getting free preventive care, such as checkups and birth control and immunizations. I don't know how many of us heard Senator King from Maine today talk about his own experience when he worked here as a young man and had insurance, so he got a preventive care checkup, which came with his insurance. They found a melanoma. Had he not gone to the doctor and had they not seen that mole that turned cancerous, he said he would not be here anymore. Health insurance saved his life.

So I wish to rhetorically ask Senator Cruz and the Republicans supporting him in this body and in the House, why would you take away free preventive care and immunizations from 71 million Americans and consign them to a status where they are absolutely sitting there without any protection because they have no health insurance?

Let's see what else we have already achieved that the Republicans want to repeal. They want to repeal 17 million kids with preexisting conditions, such as asthma and diabetes, who can now no longer be denied coverage. If my colleagues ever saw those pictures of a child gasping for air, my colleagues know those kids need coverage, they need help, and they need to be able to get that help and get the medication when they need it.

Insurers can't cancel health insurance because someone gets sick. How many stories did we hear as Congresspeople and as Senators where people went to get insurance and they said: Sorry, 25 years ago you had a suspicious mole, and therefore we are not going to insure you--or you have high blood pressure or 10 years ago you had cancer. No more. And how many times have you heard the stories where people were kicked out of their insurance because they hit a lifetime cap? That is no more. Republicans want to repeal all these benefits, and Senator Cruz was willing to talk until he dropped so these benefits could be taken away from our constituents.

I heard my friend from Wyoming, Senator Barrasso, say that health costs are rising and they are rising like never before. I guess he missed it when President Clinton told the country that health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in over 50 years--50 years. And that is because more people are getting covered and we don't have to treat people at the end game or in an emergency room because we are already seeing people get more health coverage. Insurance companies now have to justify a premium hike. Before, they could double premiums, but now they have to justify it and make sure 80 percent of the premiums they get are spent on the policyholders.

So in 2014--and we are around the corner from that--unless Senator Cruz and his Republican friends have their way, there will be no more extra charges for preexisting conditions. Right now it is just children who have that benefit, but in 2014 everybody gets it.

In 2014, no longer can insurance companies charge women more than men for their coverage. This is a huge issue. There was gender discrimination. Being a woman was considered a preexisting condition. A woman who was abused by her spouse or by her boyfriend, and she walked in and the insurance company found out, that was considered a preexisting condition because she might get beat up again. So she was told: Take a hike. That can't happen anymore.

They cannot impose dollar limits on the amount of health care spent on you in a single year. Right now, if you have a serious illness, they can say: Sorry, you reached your annual cap.

So where are we now? ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, is already in effect. Republicans want to stop it because in 2014, when those exchanges open, they know people are going to like what they see. I am telling my colleagues, when I go home and I go to community health care centers, people are so excited. And not enough of them know about it, but when they find out how easy it is--if they qualify for Medicaid, they just get their card and they are covered, and they no longer have to sneak into the emergency room when a problem gets so drastic. And all the others will have options. They will be able to choose from a platinum plan, a silver plan, or a bronze plan. We are very excited about this law.

Senator Cruz says he will stand on his feet until he drops to stop my people and your people from getting health insurance? He has met his match in us because we can stand until we drop. But we don't have to do that because we have the votes, and the reason we have the votes is this is what the last election was about.

In closing my presentation, I wish to share with my colleagues a very brief history of what happened when Social Security was proposed. It is so interesting.

In 1935, after the Great Depression and our great-grandparents were lying in the street and had nothing and people were jumping out of windows because they had nothing--they had lost their homes, they had lost their jobs, they had lost their savings, and there

was no safety net. This is what President Franklin D. Roosevelt said when he signed the act in 1935:

We can never insure one-hundred percent of the population

against one-hundred percent of the hazards and the

vicissitudes of life. But we have tried to frame a law which

will give some measure of protection to the average citizen

and to his family against the loss of a job and against

poverty-ridden old age. This law represents a cornerstone in

a structure which is being built, but it is by no means

complete.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke about the safety net in 1935. Just think about that.

Let's see what happened in the debate. Let's look at what happened in the debate.

Representative William Ditter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, took to the floor and said:

. . . security for the individual, whether worker or aged,

will be a mockery and a sham if in the attainment thereof we

. . . allot to our people the role of puppets of a

socialistic state . . .

Where have we heard that before? He called Social Security part of a socialistic state.

We cannot provide a sense of security by programs for the

destruction of wealth. . . . We cannot assure to the people a

sense of security by measures threatening their investments

of life savings.

Could this guy have been more wrong? He calls Social Security socialism and said it was going to destroy wealth when, in fact, it preserved our people in their old age.

Now, here is another--Representative Jenkins of Ohio, a Republican. He talks about Social Security this way:

This is compulsion of the rankest kind. Do not be misled by

the title. The title says ``Old-Age Benefits''. Shame on you

for putting such a misleading and unfair title on such a

nefarious bill. Old-age benefits? Think of it! Oh, what a

travesty!. . . . Mr. Chairman, what is the hurry? Nobody is

going to get a dime out of this until 1942. . . . what is the

hurry about crowding an unconstitutional proposition like

this through the House today?

Honestly--honestly--this is what we hear them say about affordable health care: Socialism, unconstitutional. It is a sham. We have plenty of time. We should delay it.

History is repeating itself right in front of our eyes.

Now it did not stop then.

In 2005, Republicans continued to attack Social Security. President George W. Bush and Congressman Paul Ryan wanted to do away with Social Security as we know it. We all remember that. They proposed abolishing Social Security and replacing it with private accounts in the stock market. We all know how safe that is. I am a former stockbroker. You do not buy stocks when you are ready to retire. That is their plan. Had this become law, seniors retiring in 2008 would have lost up to $26,000. But we stopped them and we did not allow it to happen.

Lastly, let's look at Social Security's success.

Before Social Security became the law in 1935, half of America's seniors lived in poverty in the midst of the Great Depression--half. Today, 57 million Americans receive Social Security, and it lifts 14 million elderly Americans out of poverty. It is the most successful and the most popular antipoverty program.

The Republicans said it was unconstitutional. They said it was socialism. They said it was a sham, a disaster. They are back here saying the same thing, just as we are on the cusp of delivering a benefit to so many--probably 50 million Americans.

This is my last discussion about Medicare.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act, he said:

No longer will older Americans be denied the healing

miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and

destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over

a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later

years. No longer will young families see their own incomes,

and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are

carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents,

and to their uncles, and their aunts.

This was President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Some of us actually were around in the 1960s. We remember it. And this is what the Republicans said about Medicare. Listen carefully. This is a history moment here. We are looking at what the Republicans said every time we were about to get a new benefit for the people of this Nation.

Sixty percent of Republicans in the Senate and 50 percent of House Republicans voted against Medicare. Representative Durward Hall of Missouri, a Republican, said:

. . . we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged

to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government

medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the

patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.

This is what the Republicans said. And Senator Milward Simpson of Wyoming, a Republican, said:

I am disturbed about the effect this legislation would have

upon our economy and upon our private insurance system. . . .

Well, of course, what we found out is this turns out to be one of the most successful programs.

Medicare is a success. Before Medicare became law, a majority of seniors had no health insurance. Today, nearly all seniors are receiving guaranteed health care benefits. Mr. President, 8 out of 10 seniors age 65 and older feel the program is working. With few exceptions throughout history, Medicare has been more successful than private insurers at holding down costs. And we still have to fight for Medicare. We still have to fight.

In 1995, Dick Armey, the Republican House majority leader, said, Medicare is ``a program I would have no part of in a free world.'' A bit of an overstatement--Dick Armey.

That same year, after leading an effort to raise premiums and costs for seniors, Newt Gingrich predicted that Medicare was ``going to wither on the vine.''

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole bragged in 1996, ``I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare. . . . because we knew it wouldn't work in 1965.''

And Paul Ryan's budget ends Medicare as we know it today.

So all this brings us to the moment we are in. Now Republicans are trying to defund the new health reform law. Speaker John Boehner said: Passage of health reform is ``Armageddon'' because the law will ``ruin our country.''

They said it about Social Security, they said it about Medicare, and now they are saying it about the Affordable Care Act.

The Republican Party Platform, in 2012, said:

[ObamaCare] was the high-water mark of an outdated

liberalism, the latest attempt to impose upon Americans a

euro-style bureaucracy to manage all aspects of their lives.

So I felt it was important to put into the Record the historical context of the battle we face today. I try to tell my kids and my grandkids, when we fight these battles, we sometimes forget the context, that it is not that much different than what went before us. We look different certainly. The women here were not around here then. But the fact of the matter is, they are the same battles. It is about what is the role of the national government of the greatest country in the world. I certainly, for one, believe making life better for our people and doing it in a smart way, in a fiscally responsible way, is the way to go.

We will have to make our changes to the Affordable Care Act if we see we can make it better. And we invite our Republican friends to work with us. I was one who did not vote for the drug benefit because I did not like that big, fat doughnut hole that came in there, which put people on the spot. They had to stop taking their medicine. They could not recover money. But we worked with our friends, and we ended that. And, by the way, we did it in this bill, the Affordable Care Act.

So, yes. Working together, yes. But standing up until we drop in order to stop important benefits from going to America's families? That is wrong.

I yield the floor.

Right.

Absolutely.

That is right.

That is right.

Right.

A parliamentary inquiry.

Just to make sure, because Senator Roberts--I had a question. He has gotten some time from Senator Cruz; is that correct? Senator Heitkamp wanted to make comments for a couple of minutes following Senator Stabenow.

So this is what I would ask: After Senator Heitkamp is recognized, I would be recognized. If Senator Cruz comes, I will stop at that time and yield the time to Senator Cruz and then continue after he has finished. That would be a consent.

Well, if I could just say that I am happy to allow that to go forward, but there needs to be a definite time. How much time will all three Senators--my understanding was that Senator Cruz--for how many minutes?

So if the Senator is asking that he take Senator Cruz's 15 minutes, I have no objection.

Well, if the Senator is asking that he take part of the Senator's 15 minutes and count against Senator Cruz's time, I have no problem with that whatsoever. So I would revise that to say that Senator Heitkamp would be going for 3 minutes, Senator Roberts would be going for 5 minutes, and then I would be recognized.

When Senator Cruz arrives to take the additional 15 minutes, that is fine. So in other words, the Senator takes 5 minutes, Senator Cruz comes, and I would yield to him for the rest of the 15 minutes. He is not here.

I object and I would like to explain why, if that would be appropriate for the next 2 minutes--if I could?

Mr. President, I am proud be a longtime member of the Foreign Relations Committee for many years. When this Benghazi tragedy occurred, the Foreign Relations Committee held hours of hearings. I sat through those hearings.

I want to say to my friends, I share their dismay that we have not caught the perpetrators. But I want to remind them that the President who caught Osama bin Laden--who killed so many of our people--was President Obama, and when he says he is going to do something he will not rest until he does it.

Secretary Clinton immediately called for an Accountability Review Board. That Accountability Review Board was not partisan. What my colleague wants to do is set up some kind of committee filled with politicians--of which I happen to be proud that I am one--but I put more faith, frankly, in the professionalism and the nonpartisanship of the Accountability Review Board.

Who headed that Accountability Review Board? Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who was first picked for public service by George H.W. Bush; and Admiral Michael Mullen, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

There are many other reasons why I oppose this. Secretary Kerry has addressed this and continues to address it. We had two classified briefings. The Select Committee on Intelligence is preparing to release a bipartisan report on the events that occurred in Benghazi and, last December, the Senate Homeland Security Committee released a bipartisan report on the security deficiencies, and the good news is: Of course as a result of this tragedy, changes have been made all over the world.

I sense there is politics here. I sense there is politics here. I do not think it is right to inject politics into such a tragedy. Therefore, I object.

Objection.

Mr. President, we have had a carefully constructed list of who would speak. I wonder how long the Senator wishes to speak.

How much time does my friend need to talk about his first subject?

What was supposed to happen was that I was going to speak next. I will give up my place so Senator Murray can speak, followed by Senator Coons, followed by Senator Inhofe for 9\1/2\ minutes.

I don't know how many minutes my friend needs--5 minutes.

I would follow Senator Inhofe's 9\1/2\ minutes.

Yes.

Mr. President, the consent I made was that we would go to Senator Murray for 12 minutes, followed by Senator Coons for 5 minutes, Senator Inhofe would be next for 9\1/2\ minutes, and then I would get to go for about 10 minutes.

No, two.

The Republicans had quite a few on their side speak. The Republicans had three speakers--one right after the other--so now we are going to have three speakers, and then it goes back to Senator Inhofe.

Mr. President, that is what I said. I said Senator Murray, Senator Coons, Senator Inhofe, and then Senator Boxer. That is what I said. Is that all right?

No. I say to my friend, I was promised to be able to speak at 3:30 so I am already giving up so much time, so if the Senator from Oklahoma could just take 9\1/2\ minutes.

All right. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, first I want to add my voice of condolence to that of Senator Murray's and say to the Navy family how heavy our hearts are and that I stand ready, any minute, any hour, any second, to work with my colleagues to make sure mentally ill people do not get their hands on weapons. As soon as we can get a breakthrough on that-- and maybe on background checks--maybe we can finally do something for 90 percent of the American people who want us to.

I also want to note that Senator Inhofe and I have an ongoing dispute, though it is quite friendly, on climate change. We went through this this morning. He sees evidence that climate change is probably still a hoax, and he talks about the great news that we do not have climate change. I think you should tell that to the people in Colorado. But notwithstanding that--forget

that--I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record four articles that appeared in the recent days about how the consensus on climate change is growing, and there is 95-percent certainty that the cause is human activity.

Mr. President, I want to ask Senator Durbin how much time he needs, and I will make a request that he be recognized.

I am not the gentle lady anymore.

I remember 10 years of being a gentle lady.

Well, that is so nice of the Senator to say.

Mr. President, I want to talk about what is happening in this Congress or, better yet, what is not happening. We have to pass a continuing resolution so we can fund this government. That means all the functions--whether it is air traffic controllers, whether it is building our highways, whether it is FBI agents, whether it is paying Social Security. All the things we do--Medicare--we have to pass a continuing resolution to keep this government going--sending meat inspectors out to make sure we do not get poisoned, and the rest; you name it.

And where is the House? All spending bills have to start over there. The Republicans control it. They have not sent us a continuing resolution. We also have to make sure we pay our debts--just like all Americans--debts we voted for. Whether it is military spending, domestic spending, spending to help our farmers, spending to help recover from Hurricane Sandy, we have to pay our debts. To do that, we have to increase the debt ceiling.

October 15; it is coming. If we do not do it, if the Republicans play games, we will see a crash in the stock market. I am sure every American looks forward to that. They are not doing their work because they are obsessed--they are obsessed--with repealing a law they have tried to repeal 41 times. They are obsessed.

They tried to get it overturned in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said it is constitutional. They are trying to take away a law that is helping every American, and I am going to talk about it. They are obsessed.

They refuse to understand that raising the debt ceiling is not about future spending, it is about past spending. So their reason is, they are very upset about the Affordable Care Act--or ObamaCare, however you want to call it--and they are very upset about the deficit, which has come down by half from its height with this President's leadership.

Here is the thing: I do a lot of speaking to youngsters in school. When I explain to them what the role of a Senator is, I say, in essence, it is to make life better for the people--that is what I think it is--and to do it in a smart way, and to work with your colleagues to make sure you can compromise and get things done. Whether it is building highways or making sure our ports are dredged or funding the military, we must work together. No one gets everything he or she wants. That is life. You have to compromise. You cannot be an ideologue and say: My way or the highway.

To go after a law that was passed years ago--that you tried to repeal 41 times and failed, that you tried to overturn in the Court and failed--and then not to do your most fundamental responsibility of keeping the government open? There is something really wrong about this.

Let's take a look at this economy. Why are they so upset at what the President has been able to achieve?

President Clinton left office with a surplus--over $200 billion. Remember that.

Eight years later, President Bush left office with a $1.3 trillion deficit. I will not go into why because I do not have the time, but that is the fact, and no one can erase it from the books.

Since President Obama took office, the projected annual deficit has been cut in half. It is less than $650 billion. Yet they are willing to shut the government down by making believe no progress has been made, when we have cut the deficit in half and we are trying to get out of a disastrous recession.

Under the Clinton administration, the economy created more than 20 million private sector jobs. Under George W. Bush, we lost 665,000 jobs.

Remember, Clinton, millions of jobs created; George Bush, the Republican, hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs lost.

Under President Obama, we have added 3.9 million private sector jobs--coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. You can say what you want, but President Obama and the Democrats here--even though it has been a bear to do it--we have managed to wrap our arms around this recession and get us on a course.

How about housing? Home prices are up more than 12 percent over the last year. Home sales have increased 47 percent since their crisis low. Recent housing starts are up 75 percent from April 2009.

Housing was the cause of this recession. People sliced and diced mortgages and sold them on Wall Street and brought everything down. Deregulation; that was the Republican mantra. It went too far, and we lost our way, and people suffered through the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The Republicans, instead of working with us to keep the progress up, want to shut the government down, want to say we are not going to pay our bills, even though they voted to rack up those bills.

Look at the auto industry. In 2009, the auto industry lost more than 100,000 jobs. Rescuing the auto industry saved more than 1 million jobs, and the news is great coming out of Detroit. People are buying cars.

The Republicans put it all at risk by shutting down the government and not paying the bills.

There are going to be no more bailouts. I was so proud. I offered the first amendment. I think my friend remembers: No more government bailouts to the big banks. So we are on our way to saying, once and for all, we are not going to let this crisis happen again.

The stock market. Do you know the Dow fell to 6,500, Mr. President? Since then, it has rebounded to 15,000--almost 2,000 points above its precrisis record. But yet they will put it all at risk because they are saying they are going to play games, shut down the government, not pay the debt.

The last time they played these games--the Republicans--GAO found that threatening to breach the debt limit cost the Treasury $1.3 billion just in 2011, and $18 billion over the next 10 years.

The next time a Republican tells you how fiscally conservative they are, ask them why it is they added $18 billion to the debt by playing games with the debt ceiling.

I want to quote Republican President Ronald Reagan, one of the heroes of my friends' party. He said:

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.

That is Ronald Reagan. In 1983 he said that even talking about a default had terrible consequences. They are not even talking about a default, they are planning for a default.

My friend, who is such a great leader in the Senate, Senator Durbin, informed us and Senator Reid informed us that the Republicans in the House have a bill they love. We call it Pay China First. If there is a default, they will keep paying China the interest we owe them, but they will default on all of the Americans here and all of the contractors, the highway contractors, the people who dredge our ports. They will default on what they owe the American people, but they will pay China.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the CBO Director under George W. Bush, said:

It's a bad idea. Little defaults, big defaults; default's a

bad idea period and there should be no one who believes

otherwise.

He said that in 2011. There is no such thing as a good default.

I have shown how far we have come with this economy. If we do not have the far right of the Republican Party taking America's country hostage, we will continue to grow this economy. But if they play games and try to shut down this government, it could all turn around. If they play games and they try to default on the debt, they could turn it all around in a bad way, and we will see the results as Social Security recipients start to worry, as Medicare receipts start to worry, as contractors start to worry, as Federal FBI agents can no longer get paid--it goes on and on and on.

One of the reasons they are so crazed is they are obsessed over the Affordable Care Act, which they call ObamaCare. In my time, I want to tell you what the Affordable Care Act does and see whether you think it is worth shutting down the government over this bill. They tried it 41 times, but they hope 42 will be their winner. Over 1 million Californians--this is just in my State--are already newly insured. Three million young adults are now insured on their parents' plans--3 million are now insured, 400,000 in my State. Now 71 million Americans are getting free preventive care, such as checkups and birth control and immunizations. They do not like that, I guess. They are willing to shut the government down over it. Now 17 million kids with preexisting conditions, such as asthma, can no longer be denied coverage. Insurance companies cannot cancel your health insurance because you get sick. There are no more lifetime limits on coverage. Anyone who has had a catastrophic disease knows it is pretty easy to hit that cap. No more caps in a year. No more lifetime caps. This is what they are so obsessed about. So they are willing to shut down the government to take away these benefits.

They said: Oh, health care costs are going to go up because of the Affordable Care Act. Well, guess what, health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in over 50 years. Insurance companies now have to justify their premium hikes. Before, they just hiked your rates and they could do it with impunity. Now, insurers have to spend at least 80 percent of your premiums on your medical care, not on overhead. They cannot pocket the money; they have to spend it on health care. Also, 8.5 million Americans have received rebate checks from their insurance company because they were overcharged. Is that what the Republicans are so upset about? They are willing to shut down the government to take away these benefits from the people.

Insurance companies cannot deny coverage or charge more for preexisting conditions. They cannot charge women more than men. There is no more discrimination. Again, in a single year, they cannot impose dollar limits on you.

The Republicans are upset about the deficit. The deficit has been cut in half.

I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

The House has voted 41 times to defund the Affordable Care Act. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court, the Republican attorneys general. They lost. They made it a centerpiece of the 2012 election. They lost the Presidential election. Now they are willing to shut down the government unless they get their way.

So I would conclude by asking some rhetorical questions.

Why are the Republicans obsessed with kicking young people off their parents' insurance?

Why are the Republicans so obsessed with stopping preventive care, such as checkups and birth control and immunizations?

Why are Republicans so obsessed with repealing benefits that guarantee insurance coverage for children and adults with preexisting conditions?

Why are they so obsessed with stopping 13 million people from getting insurance who never had the chance before?

Why are they so obsessed with stopping 24 million people from getting insurance under the new State health exchanges?

Why are they so obsessed with repealing a law that prevents insurance companies from canceling an insurance policy when someone gets sick? Why are they obsessed that we are stopping that practice?

Why are they so obsessed when we say you can no longer have an annual dollar limit on benefits?

Why are they so obsessed with repealing a law that says to an insurance company: You cannot have a lifetime limit on benefits.

Why are they so obsessed with repealing a law that finally stops discrimination against women? You know, being a woman was considered a preexisting condition. Honestly. You would have to pay twice as much as a man for your health care. If you were a victim of some kind of spousal abuse, that was considered a preexisting condition and your payments went up or maybe you never even got insurance.

I have to that say finally, why are they so obsessed with doing away with the Affordable Care Act when CBO--the Congressional Budget Office--says it will save $109 billion over 10 years and over $1 trillion the following decade?

I cannot answer these questions. All I can think is that it is politics. It is politics. I have been here a long time. I am proud of it. I thank my people in California for allowing me to have this honor. There were many laws I did not like, believe me. I have served with five Presidents. I did not agree with quite a few of them--two or three--but when I lost a battle, I did not try to shut down the government. When I lost a battle, I did not say: We cannot pay our debts. Oh, maybe I voted once or twice as a symbolic vote, but I knew the votes were there.

So I would say to my friends, get over your obsession and proceed with your responsibilities to keep this government open. Forget about repealing a health care law that is about to kick in that is good for the people and pay your debts.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 5 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes at this time.

Madam President, today there are hopeful signs that the international community will act to secure Syria's chemical weapons which have caused so much pain and so much suffering, including the suffering of little infants and children. A peaceful resolution to the Assad regime's use of these lethal, outlawed weapons would certainly be the best outcome. I commend the resolve of President Obama, without which we wouldn't be looking at a potential diplomatic solution.

I wish to lay out for the record why we must act in response to the use of chemical weapons. Of course, I prefer it to be done through the international community. But I wish to be clear: There are certain norms, there are certain rules, there are certain laws that must be respected and obeyed; otherwise, we lose our humanity, and this is an example.

Famous leaders throughout history have called war various things. They have called war a contagion. They have called war hell. They have called war a scourge, murder, a crime, despicable. But even in the chaos and in the darkness of war, there are rules. There are red lines. There are boundaries. There are limits. There are norms and there are laws. That is why in our Nation, as difficult and as painful as it has been, we have held our servicemembers accountable when they acted outside those norms. We did it just last month with the conviction of a soldier for war crimes committed in Afghanistan.

The use of chemical weapons is way outside international laws, rules, boundaries, limits, and norms, and has been so since the end of World War I, when the world uniformly condemned them. We know--we know without a shadow of a doubt--that they have been used by Syria in a big way, and it is time for all Members of Congress and, frankly, all members of civilized society to look into our hearts, to look into our souls, and to look into our consciences. The painful way to do it is to look at the shocking acts committed against innocent, men, women, and children in Syria. Look at those videos, as difficult as it might be, of children and their families dying horrible, ghastly deaths, writhing in pain, gasping for air, foaming at the mouth as the gas attacks their nervous systems.

Do we have a conscience? I pray we do. Albert Einstein once said: ``The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.''

Let me repeat it. ``The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.''

Doing nothing can sometimes be an attractive alternative. I understand it. But each of us who looks at these videos, who reads about what happened, each of us must ask ourselves, as human beings, as citizens of our great Nation: Can we respond to these atrocities by doing nothing? Can we sit back and do nothing in the face of Syria's use of chemical weapons on its own people, its own children?

When the President said he had a red line on this, he wasn't speaking for himself alone; he was speaking for the world that disavowed these weapons. I have to say that, to me, the Senate has a red line on this. Anyone who voted for the Syria Accountability Act in 2003, be it in the House or Senate, drew a red line, because in it, we condemned and we decried the development of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, and we tied that program to our own national security. There is no way our national security is unaffected when these weapons are used and no one is held accountable.

Did we mean it when we voted for the Syria Accountability Act? Did we mean it when we passed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, which I was proud to vote for. Did we mean it? Words are good, but tyrants do not heed words. History is replete with tyrants who stood in the face of the worst condemnation and annihilated people. If we stand by and do nothing, what message do we send to those who have these weapons?

I mentioned the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, and I will tell my colleagues, as we look at the world--and there is a lot to complain about and be ashamed of and worry about--one of the good things is that since we passed the Chemical Weapons Convention and ratified it, 80 percent of the chemical weapons of the world have been destroyed.

I think we should listen again to colleagues who spoke during the Senate debate on the Chemical Weapons Convention. Here is what Joe Biden, our Vice President, said:

Norms are created so that we have standards for civilized

conduct by which to judge others. Without them, we leave the

rogue countries to behave as free actors.

Our own Pat Leahy said:

We will advise and consent so the President can ratify this

treaty. I truly believe we will. It will show the moral

leadership that the Senate should show and the United States

should show. We will act as the conscience of this Nation,

and we will advise and consent to this treaty. We will show

the moral leadership because we began this by saying we would

act unilaterally, if need be, renouncing our own use of

chemical weapons with or without a treaty. That was true

leadership.

So we hear the words ``morality'' and ``conscience'' and ``leadership.'' These shouldn't be just words. We should show that courage. Here are words from John Warner, our former colleague. He said:

I first learned of chemical weapons at the knee of my

father who was a surgeon in the trenches in World War I. He

described to me in vivid detail how he cared for the helpless

victims of that weapon . . . we cannot turn back now from

that leadership role.

Sixteen years later, in this very Chamber where I stood and proudly cast my vote for the Chemical Weapons Convention, we are facing a clear violation of law and humanity.

How do we react? If we do nothing, what is the signal to Assad? What is the signal to Kim Jong Un in North Korea, who has what has been described as a massive array of chemical weapons in an area where we have 28,000 American troops keeping the peace. The message we send if we do nothing is not a good one. It will send a message that says we don't mean what we say; We don't stand behind the laws we pass or the conventions we ratify. These chemical weapons kill people like cockroaches. When we read history, we know these weapons were used on the Iranians by Saddam Hussein and one Iraqi military official called these weapons an ``annihilation insecticide.''

That is what they have been called. These weapons cause excruciating death. That is why a monster such as Hitler chose them to wipe out millions of those he considered subhuman. We all know the history. He didn't use them on troops; he used them on those groups that he considered subhuman. Yet, while the rest of the world was eliminating chemical weapons, Syria was stockpiling precursor chemicals and building one of the largest chemical weapons arsenals in the world.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman said in 2012 that Syria reserved the right to use these weapons against external forces. His statement already is a violation of international law. He said: We reserve the right to use these weapons against external forces. But he went on to say--and we have his name: ``Any stock of WMD or unconventional weapons that the Syrian Army possesses will never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis, under any circumstances.'' Remarkably, Syria violated its own red line.

Chris Miller is a U.S. Army veteran and he is an expert in the area of chemical and biological weapons. Here is what he wrote in ``The Guardian.'' He said we must: ``jealously guard what progress has been made in working toward a more peaceful world.''

He added:

The steady worldwide reduction of chemical weapons is a

prime example of that progress--one that we cannot allow to

be eroded so easily.

I can't underscore this enough. In a world full of challenges and disappointments and for people such as the Presiding Officer and me who believe so much that we can have a peaceful world, this is one of the few areas we can point to--where 80 percent of the world's arsenal of chemical weapons has been destroyed. If we turn our back on this tyrant and on this use, clearly, the chemical weapons will go right back into production. They will be marketing chemical weapons, and we know what will happen when they get into certain hands. We should not ignore history or we are doomed to repeat it.

The British soldier and poet Wilfred Owen wrote this in an effort to depict the horrors of chemical warfare in World War I. This is what he said: ``If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.''

He saw it firsthand in World War I, where 90,000 troops were killed by these heinous weapons, including 6,000 French, British, Canadian, and Belgian troops killed by German forces in one battle alone. Nations flocked to sign the Geneva Protocol after World War I. Syria joined them, and now more than 1,000 Syrian civilians lay dead due to Assad's decision to bring back these horrors.

How will we react?

Our former colleague and respected national security leader Dick Lugar says chemical weapons ``may be the greatest threat to our country of any security risk that we have, much more than any other government, for example, or another Nation because they can be used by terrorists, by very small groups''--Dick Lugar, who played such a great role in securing nuclear weapons after the Cold War; Dick Lugar, who understands what could happen if we turn our back now.

I respectfully say to my colleagues: Don't look away. Don't rationalize inaction. We cannot stay silent. If we fail to act in the face of such a brazen violation of international norms, in the face of an assault on conscience, then outlawing these weapons becomes meaningless and we put the security of all of us at risk. If we fail to act, we make it more likely that these weapons will be used again in Syria and elsewhere. If we fail to act, we send a terrible message to brutal regimes such as North Korea and Iran, which are seeking to develop nuclear weapons. In the case of North Korea, they have what has been described by Secretary Hagel as a massive amount of chemical weapons. If we fail to act, we make it more likely that these horrific weapons could be used against our allies such as Israel and our troops. That is for sure. If we fail to act, we make it more likely that chemical weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists and others who would do us harm. If we fail to act, we send a message that the civilized world will permit the use of these ghastly and inhumane weapons, not just on the battlefield but against children and families sleeping in their beds.

I ask my colleagues and the American people, do not look away. It is easier to look away.

We had a chance to see some of the videos, Madam President, as you know, during our luncheon meeting. We cannot sit by and do nothing in the face of such horror. We cannot.

So here is the thing: We have a chance now--because of President Obama's resolve, because of the resolve of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, because of the resolve of many people inside government and outside government, we have the resolve to do something. And the best something would be an international response.

I am proud of our President for making sure this alternative was in Vladimir Putin's mind when they met. And

I am glad Secretary Kerry said: Look, there is an alternative. Let them hand over their weapons. Let's dismantle them and do it right and verify it and hold them accountable, and we get past this. That is the route I believe we all want to see happen. We want to see the world stand up against this inhumanity, but let's not be naive about it. When you are dealing with tyrants, you have to enforce that kind of a plan.

I am hopeful today but not sanguine. I am hopeful that the United Nations will take this as an opportunity to stand firm, to say that the outlawing of chemical weapons meant something in reality, not just on paper. And when we said people should not die like cockroaches, we meant it. So I am hopeful we will have a small pause here and we will give diplomacy a chance to work between the nations, and I praise our leadership in the Obama administration and France's leadership and British leadership. I hope the Russians meant it when they said: Let's try to resolve this in a way that will result in the absolute destruction of the chemical weapons Syria has. I hope they mean it.

We cannot walk away from an inhumane act that caused innocent children to die in unspeakable ways because, I will tell you, if we walk away, then I think the message is that there are no limits on gross violations of international norms, there are no limits on gross violations of international laws, and there are no limits on violations of human decency.

I am very pleased the President took this to the Congress. I think it was right. But I want to be clear: The President, as our Commander in Chief, has the authority--if he believes there is an imminent threat or danger to us, he has the authority to act. And I think Richard Lugar is sending us a very powerful message when he says one of our greatest national security threats--he said even greater than a threat posed by any nation--is the possibility that a small terrorist group could get their hands on these weapons. I will tell you, Madam President, that is an unacceptable situation, and I know the President worries about this every day, and every night when he goes to sleep, it is on his mind. One way to make sure the chance of that happening is lessened greatly is to make sure one of the largest caches of these weapons is controlled internationally and then destroyed. That will, in fact, mean we will have a more peaceful world.

There is a civil war going on in Syria. No one wants to get in the middle of it--least of all those of us who voted against the Iraq war because we saw what would happen. And years and years and years later, unfortunately, we were proven right. I was proud to vote no on that war. I think I have a little credibility here for not wanting to go to war, for making sure the intelligence is right, for making sure there is a limited mission, for making sure this is well thought out.

I would say in closing that the best ending to this crisis is for the international community to take hold of this--together, all of us--and work to see that these weapons of mass destruction are first accounted for, then controlled, and then destroyed. If we can do that, then the horrifying deaths we have witnessed and we have seen on tape today and the American people have been witnessing--at least there will be something good that could come out of this because otherwise, if there is no action, their deaths will not mean anything, they will be forgotten.

So we need to keep a credible plan before us, which means we want to see international rules apply, we want to see the international community take hold of this and have a good outcome. But I will tell you this--and I believe this with every fiber of my being--such a gross violation of humanity cannot go unanswered.

Thank you very much.

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

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that time during all the quorum calls be charged equally to both sides.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I would like to recognize Ariel Rios, a man who made the ultimate sacrifice while protecting our country and who is being honored today at a special dedication ceremony here in Washington, DC.

On September 10, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives--ATF--is honoring Special Agent Ariel Rios, who gave his life in the line of duty, by dedicating the Ariel Rios Reflecting Pool at the ATF Headquarters in Washington, DC.

On December 2, 1982, while conducting an undercover operation in support of an investigation into illegal drug and firearms violations, Agent Rios was shot and killed. At the time of his death, Agent Rios was 28 years old and had worked for ATF for 4 years. His killers were sentenced to life in prison, plus 50 years. Agent Rios was survived by his wife Elsie and their young children Eileen and Francisco.

Naming the reflecting pool at the ATF Headquarters, which is located at 99 New York Avenue NE, in honor of Agent Rios brings him home to his ATF family. This memorial will forever provide ATF employees with a place to honor and reflect on the life of an agent who made the ultimate sacrifice.

This dedication also provides an opportunity for us to honor all the brave men and women who wear the badge and put their lives on the line every day to protect this great Nation.

Thank you, Chairman Murray and Chairman Mikulski, for explaining that this legislation will

allow California high-speed rail to move forward.

I also share the concerns expressed by Senator Feinstein, and I would also like to reiterate that the people of California voted to fund this project. The California State Legislature voted to fund this project, and the Department of Transportation, after weighing a number of applications for high-speed rail across the Nation, decided to fund this project. I find it troubling that opponents have attempted to hinder the advancement of this project by curtailing an independent agency's mission and responsibilities, as well as trying to prohibit the transmission of appropriated funds to its rightful destination.

I am pleased that this legislation will allow the Surface Transportation Board to act within its statutory authority. I also see that the legislation will allow the Federal Railroad Administration to administer its previously awarded grants to California, and I thank Chairman Murray for advancing this legislation.

I would also like to note that this project is incredibly important to the future of California. California's 170,000 miles of roadway are the busiest in the Nation, with automobile congestion draining $18.7 billion in lost time and wasted fuel from the State's economy every year.

Additionally, flights between Los Angeles and the Bay area, which is the busiest short-haul market in the United States with 5 million passengers annually, are the most delayed in the country, with approximately one in every four flights late by an hour or more.

California's high-speed rail system will not only increase mobility and save lost time and money over the coming decades, it will also create near-and long-term employment opportunities, enhance environmental and energy goals, and spur economic development.

Madam President, I wish to pay tribute to an incredible woman--former Congresswoman and Ambassador Lindy Boggs--who was a trailblazer for women and a passionate advocate for the people of Louisiana and people across the country who too often don't have a voice in Washington.

When I first became a Member of Congress in 1983, Lindy was one of only 21 women serving in the House of Representatives. I will always be grateful for the kindness and generosity she showed in taking me under her wing--and it was the same for so many other women who followed her in Congress and found in her a role model of such dignity and strength.

No one will ever forget her courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy--the loss of her husband, Congressman Hale Boggs, whose plane disappeared during a campaign trip to Alaska in 1972. Louisianans, including her husband's closest friends, urged her to run for the seat in a special election the next year, and she became the first woman elected to Congress from the State where she was beloved.

I remember visiting Lindy's home State of Louisiana years later and being overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and respect the people she represented had for her--and with good reason. Throughout her time in Congress, she was a champion for civil rights, women's equality, and social justice.

During her first term in Congress, Lindy was assigned to the House Banking Committee. At one point, the committee was considering an amendment to a lending bill banning discrimination on the basis of race, age or veteran status.

Seizing the opportunity, Lindy quickly added the words ``sex or marital status'' to the amendment and ran to a copy machine to make copies for each Member. She told her colleagues:

Knowing the Members composing this committee as well as I

do, I'm sure it was just an oversight that we didn't have

`sex' or `marital status' included. I've taken care of that,

and I trust it meets with the committee's approval.

That is how sex discrimination was made illegal in the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.

She was a skilled lawmaker who used her immense personal charm, political savvy and intellect to win over colleagues on issues that were critical to her State and the country. One of her Republican House colleagues remarked:

It was impossible not to like Lindy. She liked everybody.

She was nice to everybody. She achieved more with less huff

and puff and bluster than any of the rest of us did.

Lindy stood up for equality and racial justice, even when her views were not popular with some voters in her own district. When she left Congress in 1991 after serving nine terms, she was the only White Member to represent a Black-majority district.

She led the fight for equal pay for women in government jobs and for greater access to government contracts for women business owners. She worked to protect women from domestic violence, and inspired so many young people--women and men--to follow her into public service.

Lindy was a pioneer in so many ways--the first woman to chair a major political party's nominating convention, the first woman to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, and the first woman to have a room in the Capitol named in her honor. But because of her leadership and mentorship, Lindy made sure that she would not be the last and that generations of other women would be able to follow in her extraordinary footsteps.

My heart goes out to her family, her friends and all of those whose lives she touched. She will be dearly missed.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.