Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, all over this country the American people are outraged by what is going on here in Washington. They have a hard time understanding why rightwing extremists in the Republican Party in the House are able to shut down the U.S. Government, while paychecks are being denied to millions of Federal employees and, at the same time, services--in some cases desperately needed services--are being threatened for tens of millions of Americans. People are hurting and they wonder what is going on.

Let me say a few words regarding what, in my view, has, in fact, happened. From the beginning, some of my Republican colleagues are saying: We just need to talk. Let's compromise. A key point they neglect to make is that a major compromise has already taken place. The Democrats in the Senate--and I am an independent, as is the Presiding Officer, affiliated with the Democratic Caucus--decided to send a budget for a continuing resolution to the House, which, in my view, was a very, very weak budget, one that I am totally dissatisfied with, and I think most Members of the caucus are. It continues the budget at sequestration levels which will have a devastating impact on this country. It is a bad budget. But the reason the majority leader sent it over to the House was that he was of the understanding that the Speaker of the House had requested that type of budget, and that once that budget came over--once that CR came over--the House would agree to it. In fact, let me read from an article in the Washington Post today commenting on an ABC interview that Speaker Boehner did. The Washington Post says:

In the ABC interview, Boehner tacitly acknowledged making a

deal with Senate Democrats to avoid using the threat of a

shutdown to attack ObamaCare in exchange for an agreement to

maintain the deep cuts known as the sequester through the

fall. He conceded that his rank and file forced him onto the

path to shutdown by insisting on waging the fight over

ObamaCare.

That was the Washington Post today.

What does that mean? It means that an agreement had been reached by the Speaker and the majority leader that if the Democrats accepted the very low budget number the Republicans wanted, there would be a clean continuing resolution. What this article points out--and what I think the Speaker has virtually acknowledged--is that despite his agreement with the majority leader here in the Senate, he couldn't carry it out because his extreme rightwing said: Thanks. You got us the budget we wanted, the CR we wanted. That is not enough. Now we want to end ObamaCare.

That is where we are today.

So anyone who comes forward and says: Why don't you talk? Why don't you compromise? The fact is--and I think the majority leader has made this point--he compromised far more than many of us felt comfortable with.

A compromise has already been reached. The Democrats accepted, in my view, a very bad and weak Republican budget. But it was done with the hope and the understanding that there would be a clean continuing resolution and that the U.S. Government would not be shut down. That is point No. 1.

Point No. 2 is that the other day the Speaker said on TV that there are not the votes to pass a clean CR. What I have been hearing here on the floor of the Senate and in the House is that we have Republicans who are not sympathetic to ObamaCare, they don't like ObamaCare, and they would like to defund ObamaCare. But they understand we don't shut down the U.S. Government. We don't threaten that for the first time in the history of the United States we may not pay our bills, be a deadbeat Nation, and drive our economy and our financial system, and perhaps the entire world's financial system, into a catastrophic area by not paying our bills. We believe that there are enough Republicans in the House to join with Democrats and pass a clean CR.

The President and the majority leader have both made this point: Have the vote. Have the vote, Mr. Speaker. Maybe you are right or maybe you are not. But we don't know until you have the vote. I urge, as I have before, that the Speaker of the House function as the Speaker of the House of Representatives and not as the speaker of the Republican Party.

The last point I wish to make touches on an article that appeared in yesterday's New York Times. It is a very important article because it really tells us who is behind this shutdown and what their motives are. If anybody thinks this government shutdown or the threats about not paying our bills and driving the world's economy into catastrophic areas are ideas that just occurred the other day, that a Senator just had this bright idea, they would be very mistaken. The fact is we have a growing rightwing movement in this country funded by some of the wealthiest people in America, including the Koch brothers, a family that has made their money in fossil fuels and are worth over $70 billion--$70 billion is their worth. They are worth $70 billion, and they have access to the best health care in the world. They have access to the best housing in the world. Their family members can go to the best colleges and universities in the world. Yet they are obsessed with, among other things, making sure 25 million Americans have no health insurance at all.

I am a strong supporter of a Medicare for all, a single-payer program. I don't think the Affordable Care Act went far enough. But to say the least, 20 million or 25 million Americans can finally have access to health insurance. They can go to the doctor when they need to go to the doctor. There are now no regulations that prevent them from getting care because of a preexisting condition. Can we imagine billionaires--billionaires--going to war against working people so they and their kids cannot get health insurance? I think that is just obscene. That is just obscene.

Let me quote from The New York Times article of yesterday. It is important that people understand that the fight against the Affordable Care Act is just the tip of the iceberg. We have families and billionaires such as the Koch brothers who not only want to see that we don't expand health insurance in this country, but they have a long list of issues they are going after. In fact, they want to repeal virtually every major piece of legislation passed in the last 80 years that protects the middle class, working families, women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor. That is their agenda. So it is not a question of opposing the extension of health insurance through ObamaCare; that is not enough for them. What they want to do is end Medicare as we know it right now, and transform it into a voucher system, that gives an elderly person who is dealing with cancer $8,000 and says: Good luck to you.

They want to make massive cuts in Medicaid. They don't want to expand Medicaid. They want massive cuts. They are very clear about wanting to end Social Security. They don't believe the Federal Government should be involved in retirement issues and Social Security.

One of the more amazing things these guys want to do--and many of our Republican colleagues apparently drank the lemonade on this issue--is to abolish the concept of the minimum wage. The Federal minimum wage now is $7.25 an hour. People can't live on that. But their idea is to get the Federal Government out of the minimum wage issue--no floor--so that if an employer in a hard-pressed area in Maine or in Vermont or in Michigan can pay people $4 an hour, they think that is freedom: People have the freedom to work for $4 an hour. We don't want a minimum wage.

So, in other words, these rightwing extremists and the big money behind them have a major agenda, of which repealing ObamaCare is just one small part.

Let me just quote, if I might, the New York Times article. I ask unanimous consent to have the entire New York Times article printed in the Record.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Let me quote from the yesterday's New York Times:

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest

development in a well-financed, broadbased assault on the

health law, Mr. Obama's signature legislative initiative.

Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity, and

FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for

Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like

Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both

aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new,

too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of

its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been

deeply involved with financing the overall effort.

Let me repeat that.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been

deeply involved with financing the overall effort.

Remember, these are the guys who are worth $70 billion, who want to essentially repeal every major piece of legislation protecting working families over the last 80 years.

Let me go back to the article:

A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of

Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year--

$200 million last year.

to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight.

Et cetera, et cetera.

Now I will go to another paragraph, which is really interesting and really important:

The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable

Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track

of their health care votes; have burned faux ``Obamacare

cards'' on college campuses; and have distributed scripts for

phone calls to Congressional offices, sample letters to

editors and Twitter and Facebook offerings for followers to

present as their own.

What is going on here? What does that mean? This is what it means. As a result of the disastrous Supreme Court ruling called Citizens United, what billionaires such as the Koch brothers and others can do--and what they are doing today--is to say to Republicans in the House of Representatives: If you vote for a clean continuing resolution, if you vote to keep the government open, if you make it very clear that you will oppose any effort to see the U.S. default on its debts--if you do that, let me tell you what is going to happen to you, because we have the Koch brothers and people worth billions of dollars who are prepared to jump into your campaign, perhaps get a primary opponent to run against you, and to fund that opponent with as much money as he or she needs.

So now, what democracy in the House--as a result of Citizens United-- is about is that a handful of billionaires can threaten any Member of the House with defeat by pouring in unlimited sums of money if they vote in a way that the Koch brothers do not like.

If that is how people think American democracy is supposed to function, it would surprise me very much. But that is not what American democracy is supposed to be about. That tells me again why we have to do everything we can to overturn this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision so that a handful of billionaires cannot dictate public policy here in the United States of America and in the Congress.

Let me just conclude by saying this: The American people are angry and they are frustrated, and I think what they are seeing is that the middle class of this country is disappearing. In fact, in the last 24 years median family income today is lower than it was. It has gone down. You have millions of people who are out there working for wages they just cannot raise a family on. You are seeing right now a growth in poverty among elderly people. In the midst of a disappearing middle class and the increase of poverty, you are seeing more income and wealth inequality in this country than we have seen since

the 1920s. The gap between the very rich and everybody else grows wider. And now, as I mentioned a moment ago, what billionaires are doing with their money is continuing their war against the middle class by trying to repeal important pieces of legislation.

What the American people are saying is: What about us? What about us? Who is worried that my kid who graduated from high school cannot find a job? Who is worried that my other kid who graduated college is leaving school deeply in debt? Who is worried that in our country we are not being aggressive in dealing with the issue of global warming?

There are enormous issues facing the middle class in this country: the need to create millions of jobs, the need to raise the minimum wage, the need to make college affordable, the need to significantly improve childcare in this country and education in general.

There is an enormous amount of work to be done. What this Congress should not be doing is telling 2 million workers that you are not getting paid, furloughing what was then 800,000, now 400,000 workers. That is not what we should be doing.

I hope the American people stand and make it clear to our Republican friends that they cannot shut down the government because they are not getting their way. I hope the American people would do everything they can to demand that this Congress start doing its job, which is to represent working families.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, in Vermont and all over this country there is profound anger and disgust at what is going on here in Washington. The reason is that today we remain in a significant and very serious economic downturn. Real unemployment is close to 14 percent. Over 20 million workers are unemployed. And what the American people are saying as loudly and as clearly as they can is, Congress, we want you to create millions of decent-paying jobs. All over this country, people are struggling with wages of $9 or $10 a hour. What the American people are saying to Congress is: Congress, Mr. President, we want you to raise the minimum wage.

In the midst of a serious economic crisis, the American people want us to act to improve the economy, to create jobs, to raise wages. But what are we doing today? We are saying to 800,000 hard-working Federal employees: Don't come in to work. We don't know when and if you are going to be paid. We are saying to 1.2 million other Federal employees who are at work: Thank you very much for coming in to your job today. Thank you for your work as a Capitol Hill police officer or FBI agent or somebody in the CIA or somebody working at Head Start or somebody delivering meals to low-income senior citizens, thank you all very much for your work but we don't know when and if you will be paid.

What we are doing right now is the exact opposite of what the American people want. They want us to create jobs and raise wages. What we are saying to 2 million American workers is: You are not getting paid. Some of you are furloughed. Some of you are coming in.

These Federal employees are not millionaires. They are hard-working, middle-class Americans. They are struggling as is everybody else in this country to pay their mortgages, to send their kids to college, to afford childcare, to do what other middle-class families need to do. We are putting all of them under extreme anxiety today. In an unstable, volatile economy, that is not what we should be doing.

In addition, this shutdown is having a very negative impact on the entire economy. The estimate is that we are losing about $10 billion a week as a result of the government shutdown, according to Goldman Sachs. If the government is shut down for 3 weeks, the economy will lose over $36 billion. Moody's has estimated if the shutdown lasts 4 weeks, it will drain $55 billion from the economy.

Does any sane person believe that when our economy today has so many problems--when we are just beginning to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month, when we are trying to get our feet on the ground economically-- does anybody think it makes sense to not be paying over 2 million workers and to be losing billions and billions of dollars in the economy as a result of the shutdown?

This is the start of the flu season. Every fall the Centers for Disease Control closely monitors the spread of flu and directs vaccines to where they are needed the most. But because of the shutdown, the CDC is today unable to support the annual seasonal influenza program. Does that make sense to anybody? We are endangering the health and the lives of millions of Americans because of the shutdown of the CDC.

During the shutdown the Food and Drug Administration is stopping most of its food safety operations. We have seen over the years outbreaks of salmonella and other types of food problems. Does anyone think it makes sense to shut down the FDA?

Most of the Department of Labor is closed. Ironically, we are supposed to be receiving a report from the Department of Labor telling us what kind of unemployment rate we now have, but we cannot get that because they are shut down.

The WIC Program, Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program, is being shut down. This is a program that provides good nutrition to low- income pregnant women and their babies so that the mothers and the babies will be healthy in these critical times in their lives. We want healthy children in this country. We don't want to see children die at birth. That is what the WIC Program is about.

Social Security services are being delayed. In Burlington, VT, where I live, there was a rally yesterday. Social Security workers are being furloughed. Others are working without pay. We owe it to the seniors in this country that when they are eligible for Social Security and they apply for Social Security their papers are processed in a timely manner. That is what they are due.

Head Start Programs for thousands of lower income kids are starting to close. Today Head Start provides education, health, nutrition, and other services to roughly 1 million children throughout our country. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on the impact the shutdown is already having. Four Head Start Programs that offer preschool activities for 3,200 children in Florida, Connecticut, Alabama, and Mississippi have closed and officials said 11 other programs would be shut down by week's end if Federal funding is not restored. Does any sane person believe we should be shutting down Head Start Programs at a time when preschool education is so important? We all understand that.

And it is so hard to come by. What we are telling parents today is next week you may not be able to bring your kids into a Head Start Program. How does that impact your employment? What do you do with your kid? Does anybody around here care about that?

The United States is the only nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care to all people. Today we have about 48 million people with no health insurance. ObamaCare, to my mind, is not a solution to the problem but it is a step forward. We are talking about 20, maybe 25 million people who are in desperate need of health insurance being able to get that insurance; others who are paying more than they can afford perhaps getting insurance that is more affordable to them. We should be going farther in terms of health care, but for rightwing Republicans in the House of Representatives to be saying we are going to keep this government shut down until we deny millions of people the health care based on legislation that we passed is inexcusable. It is not acceptable.

The point I think many of my colleagues made and everybody agrees with now--this is not in debate and the American people have to understand this--No. 1, the Senate passed a continuing resolution that in my view simply underfunds many of the programs out there. I am not happy about that bill. It should be much higher than that. It is not a good bill, but it was passed. Everybody understands that if Speaker Boehner chose to be the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and not the Speaker of the Republican Party, and if he brought that bill that we passed here in the Senate on the floor this morning, there is no debate, they have the votes. The Democrats and moderate Republicans and maybe more would vote for that legislation and government could be reopened this afternoon. The Speaker there has an issue he has to deal with. He has to understand that he represents all this country and not just an extreme rightwing faction.

I hope very much the Speaker will do the right thing, bring that to the floor, and reopen the government.

I thank the Senator from Georgia for yielding, and I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate.

Mr. President, in Vermont and all across this country there is huge frustration with what is going on in Washington. It is clear to me that with the middle class of this country disappearing, with millions of Americans working longer hours for lower wages, with poverty today at an alltime high in terms of the number of people living in poverty, with young people graduating college deeply in debt and others not having the resources to go to college, with real unemployment at close to 14 percent, youth unemployment higher than that, minority unemployment very high, an infrastructure that is collapsing, with the IPCC, the scientists all over the world who are studying global warming and telling us we have a planetary crisis that must be addressed by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, what people are seeing is that we have all these problems affecting them, their kids, and the planet, and in the Congress we cannot even get a budget passed.

People are angry in Vermont and across the country and they are frustrated. I know many people are saying a plague on everybody; you people are all terrible.

I just hope we can go a little bit beyond that and try to understand, in fact, what is happening and what the cause of this terrible government shutdown is and why 800,000 decent people who happen to work for the Federal Government are not at work, are not earning a paycheck, and are scared to death about how they are going to provide for their families or take care of other basic needs.

How did it happen? I think, very simply, what we should understand is that the Senate passed a conservative budget--continuing resolution-- until November 15. It was much lower than I had wanted. In fact, it is a Republican budget. It includes this terrible sequestration--something I strongly opposed--that was passed as a compromise gesture, and it was sent to the House.

Here is the most important point people need to understand in terms of what is going on in Congress: Right now, according to a very knowledgeable source, the House of Representatives has the votes to pass a clean continuing resolution, the bill that was passed in the Senate. They have the votes. It is not a question of the Speaker coming forward and saying: Gee, I just don't have the votes. They have the votes.

The political problem is that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has chosen to be the Speaker of the Republican Party, not of the whole House of Representatives. What is happening is he has 30 or 40 extreme rightwing people who are absolutely insistent that they want to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. The only way they will support any budget is if there is language in it that defunds ObamaCare.

The reason we cannot support that language is not just because ObamaCare was passed close to 4 years ago and signed by the President and it is the law of the land, it is not just because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional, it is not just because there was an election held last year in November in which this was perhaps the major issue and the President won reelection by 5 million votes-- and in the Senate the Republicans lost two seats and in the House they lost some seats--the real reason we cannot accept that language is that we would begin to accept a terrible precedent.

What the precedent would be is that it doesn't matter what happens in an election. It doesn't matter what happens in terms of the normal legislative

process of the Congress. What we would be saying is that a small group of people can blackmail the American people and hold the American people hostage unless they get their way.

If they are successful in succeeding in terms of what they want to do right now, I can absolutely guarantee that in 2 weeks, when this Congress and the White House are going to have to deal with the debt ceiling and the question of whether, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, we do not pay our bills, the money we owe, we could drive the American financial system and the world's financial system into what economists are describing as a catastrophic situation. Nobody knows what will happen. It has never occurred before, that the largest economy in the world would say, We are deadbeats; we are not paying our bills. But some economists believe this could have a huge impact all over the world: financial chaos, significant shrinkage of GDPs all over the world--gross domestic products--more and more unemployment, at a moment when the world's financial system is already fragile.

People don't have to believe Bernie Sanders in saying that. Ironically, we have all of these guys on Wall Street--no friends of mine. We have the Chamber of Commerce and all the multizillion-dollar businesses, saying to the Republicans: Don't do it. Don't take us over the edge; it will have a catastrophic impact on the economy.

When we talk about what is going on here, I don't want people to take my word for it. I have a political position and people know what that is. But I want you to hear what some responsible Republicans are saying about the reckless actions taking place in the House. I am not going to read them all, but let me read just a few. These statements are what Republicans are saying about the House Republican attempt to attach ObamaCare to the budget resolution and bring the U.S. Government to a shutdown.

Saxby Chambliss, Republican Senator from the State of Georgia, who is no friend of ObamaCare, says:

I'd love to defund ObamaCare too, but shutting down the

government and playing into the hands of the President

politically is not the right thing to do. Plus, it is going

to do great harm on the American people if we pursue that

course. We have been there; it didn't work.

Dan Coats, Republican from Indiana, on the floor a moment ago:

Here's the hard truth. President Obama will not overturn

his signature legislation so long as he is President and the

Democrats have control of the Senate. Along with these

political realities, refusing to pass legislation to keep the

government funded will not stop ObamaCare from going into

effect.

Representative Peter King, Republican from New York, in the House:

We should not be closing down the government under any

circumstances. That doesn't work. It's wrong, and you know,

ObamaCare care passed. We have to try to defund it. We have

to try to find ways to repeal it, but the fact is we

shouldn't be using it as a threat to shut down the

government.

Many more Republicans are saying the same.

What we believe right now is that a significant majority in the House of Representatives today is prepared to end the shutdown if the Speaker will give them the opportunity.

Interestingly enough, while we have great discussions here about ObamaCare and many of my Republican friends come to the floor to say how terrible it is, the American people are today in a sense voicing their opinion on ObamaCare all over this country--in their homes and in their offices all across America. Nationally, more than 10 million Americans have gone onto the Web site healthcare.gov and other Web sites to look for affordable health insurance plans under ObamaCare or to receive more information--10 million Americans in a 2-day period.

The truth of the matter is 48 million Americans have no health insurance--something my Republican friends forget. Many of them are paying much more than they can afford for health insurance. So, yes, people want an opportunity to get insurance if they don't have it and they want an opportunity to get more affordable insurance if they can. So while these guys are talking about ending ObamaCare, millions and millions of people all across the country are trying to find out how they can get into the program, and these guys are saying, Well, we don't care what millions of people want; we are going to defund it.

I mentioned 10 million people have gone to the Federal Web site. In my small State of Vermont, more than 13,000 people have visited our Affordable Care Act Web site. California, if we can believe this--one State--has reported 5 million visits to its Affordable Care Act Web site. In Kentucky, more than 78,000 visitors have gone to its Affordable Care Act Web site. Importantly, Kentucky is the only State in the South that has chosen to participate fully in ObamaCare by both expanding Medicaid and operating a State-level health insurance exchange.

In New York State, almost 10 million people visited the Web site on the first day.

So, to nobody's surprise, if people don't have any health insurance, or if people today have health insurance they cannot afford, and they are given an opportunity to come into a program which provides them with some help, people are taking advantage of it.

As millions and millions of people are trying to figure out how they can get into the system, we have our Republican friends over in the House who are saying, No, we want to defund it; we don't want to give people that opportunity.

There is a Web site called nationofchange.org, a very good Web site. I wish to read some of the headlines they have assembled about how people are responding to the Affordable Care Act. In Connecticut: ``Health Care Plans Begin: 28,000-plus Go Online to State Marketplace.''

Georgia: ``Enrollment Sites Are Swamped On First Day,'' according to the Augusta Chronicle.

Idaho: ``Idaho Health Exchange Launches With Few Hiccups,'' Idaho Statesman.

Indiana: ``Insurance Marketplace Draws Strong Early Interest,'' from Journal and Courier.

Kentucky: ``Kynect Opens To High Demand,'' the Courier-Journal.

Maine: ``Insurance Marketplace Opens To Flood of Interest.''

Delaware: ``Off And Running In New Market: Website Overwhelmed On First Day Of Access.''

Michigan: ``Insurance Exchange Debut Draws Millions,'' the Detroit News.

New Mexico: ``ObamaCare: Plenty Of Interest, a Bevy Of Computer Snags.''

On and on and on.

Colorado: ``Heavy Traffic Slows Health Website On Debut Day.''

All across the country, to nobody's great surprise, people who have no health insurance are saying, Yes, we don't want to go throughout life worrying about whether we are going to go bankrupt or whether we are going to be able to go to a doctor, and they are trying to get more information about the Affordable Care Act, and they are signing up in huge numbers--higher than people had anticipated.

Our Republican friends in the House are saying, We don't care that on the first day 10 million people expressed interest in this legislation. We want to end it. We want to end it.

It passed. It is the law. Millions of people are signing up, gaining information. And they are saying, We will continue to shut down the U.S. Government, deny a paycheck to 800,000 American workers; we don't care what happens to them, unless we get our way. And right here in the Senate--and in the House--we have sensible Republicans who are saying what is obvious: You don't have to agree with ObamaCare. I don't agree with ObamaCare. I think it needs to be improved. I believe in a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program. But at least ObamaCare is providing health insurance to some 20 million Americans today who do not have it.

I think it is important to make a point that is not being made often enough in terms of putting what is going on today with this shutdown in a broader context. Of course we can have an argument over ObamaCare. I don't think it is perfect; I want to see it improved. But where our extreme rightwing friends in the House are coming from is a lot more than trying to end ObamaCare. Everybody needs to understand this, and I think there is too little discussion on this issue. What we are looking at is a small group of people--these are tea party folks, rightwing extremist people--people who are

funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers who are worth some $71 billion, and I want to tell my colleagues what their vision is for America, because this is not just about ObamaCare. It is a vision for America and what these guys want to accomplish. For them, I should say--and some of them have been quite public about it--shutting down the government is great. It is great because they don't believe in the concept of government.

I think one of the good sources we can use to get a clue as to where these rightwing extremists are coming from is the Texas Republican Party platform of 2010. I want to use that. I could use other sources, but Texas is a very large State. Texas is today controlled by very conservative Republicans. And the truth is that the party platform of Texas, of one State, ends up being the--the ideas in it end up being adopted more or less by Republicans here in the Congress and all over the country. What they say is--this is not some small fringe group. I am not finding some whacko group out there. This is the State of Texas Republican Party platform of 2012.

I want to be very clear in telling my colleagues what this platform they have is about. These are the ideas by and large that our rightwing extremist friends believe in. It is about a lot more than ObamaCare. This is what the 2012 Republican Party platform states:

We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system

of private pensions based on the concept of individual

retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social

Security tax.

Well, if we phase out the Social Security tax, we are ending Social Security. Goodbye, Social Security. In my view, Social Security is probably the most important program ever passed by this U.S. Government. Today, over 50 million people are in the Social Security system. Social Security has gone a very long way in lowering poverty for senior citizens. Before Social Security, it was close to 50 percent; now it is somewhere around 10 percent. We have a long way to go to get that number lower, but we have made real progress.

What they are saying is they want to eliminate Social Security funding, eliminate Social Security, and when they do that, I am not quite sure what happens to a working person when that person is 67, 68, 75 years of age. No Social Security. And for people who doubt me, go to the Texas Republican Party platform. I just read exactly their quote.

This is the other thing they want to do--and I speak now as the proud chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. We have oversight over what the Veterans' Administration is doing. Within the Veterans' Administration right now, we have about 152 VA hospitals, we have some 900 community-based outreach clinics, we have hundreds of vet centers. In my view, they are providing not perfect but pretty good health care for the veterans of America, some 6 million of whom are now within the VA health care system. It is something I believe we should expand. I think we should make VA health care available to every veteran in this country.

This is what the Texas Republican Party platform says:

We support the privatization of veteran's healthcare.

I am not quite sure what that means, but it means ending the VA system as we know it because the VA is a government-funded system. If you privatize it--you can do it in a million ways--but, most likely, it sounds to me as though you would give veterans a voucher, something similar to what the Republicans in the House wanted to do with Medicare. Give people a sum of money. Go out, find the doctor or hospital you need. I think that is a terrible idea for the veterans of this country. But, again, I quote the Texas Republican Party platform of 2012:

We support the privatization of veteran's healthcare.

Another plank in terms of what they want:

We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities

are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution;

including the Departments of Education and Energy.

Did I have a time limit? I was not aware there was a time limit.

I see. Let me conclude, if I may. I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Let me say this: This debate is a lot bigger than whether the Republicans are successful in shutting down the government because of their insistence that ObamaCare be defunded. This debate is about whether a minority of the people in the House of Representatives is able to blackmail and hold hostage the American people and the U.S. Congress and the President and say: If we do not get our way, we do not care what happens to 800,000 workers and the millions of people who depend on government services. We do not care. It is our way or the highway. And in 2 weeks, these same people, I assure you, will be saying: We do not care if there is an international financial collapse, maybe the loss of millions of jobs. We do not care unless we get our way.

To surrender to that approach would be a horrible precedent because I can guarantee you absolutely that if we move down that path of government, they will be back again and again, and maybe next year it is: We are going to shut down the government unless you abolish Social Security; we are going to shut down the government unless you end the concept of the minimum wage because we do not believe in the minimum wage.

I hope that Speaker Boehner becomes the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and not just for the Republican Party. Let the Members of the House vote. And if they do, I believe this government will be reopened within hours.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, let me concur with much of what my colleague Senator Shaheen has just said. But let me begin by doing something we do not do enough and that is to say thank you to the 2 million civilians and 1.4 million men and women in the military in all of our 50 States, including some 5,000 in my own State of Vermont. So we have 2 million civilians who are working for the Federal Government and 1.4 million men and women in the military. We owe them a deep debt of gratitude. The work that they do is enormously important for our country.

They work to make sure that our drinking water and the air that we breathe is safe. It is not an accident that in many parts of this country, the air that people are breathing, that our kids are breathing, is a lot cleaner than it used to be. It took a lot of work to make that happen. We thank them for that.

We have Customs people patrolling our borders. We thank them for their work. We have Federal workers to protect the health and safety of working people all over the country. We have Federal workers who are working to educate kids with special needs. We have Federal employees who provide food to low-income pregnant women, infants, children, and senior citizens. We have Federal employees who are working in VA hospitals, and we have nurses and many other staff doing a great job for our veterans.

We have Federal employees who make sure that children receive needed care and services so that their parents can go to work. They repair our roads, bridges, dams, culverts, and sewers. They sweep the floors. They clean our bathrooms and make sure the places we work in are not infested.

Americans who work for the Federal Government are part of the backbone of this country. I personally thank them for what they do. But it is no secret that in recent years there has been a huge assault against the Federal workforce. For the past 3 years, the pay of Federal workers has been frozen at a time when the costs that they are incurring in terms of gasoline, heating oil, prescription drugs, and of everything else have been going up. But their pay has been level.

As a thank you for all of the work that Federal employees do here in Washington and Vermont, in Massachusetts and all over this country, our thank you to them has been to shut down the government and to tell some 800,000 Federal employees--these are single moms trying to raise kids, these are proud people, civilians in the military, people in our National Guard; these are people who are doing important work, who have families to raise, and who are dedicated to their jobs--we are saying: Sorry, you have to go home. They are going home, and they are not even sure whether they are going to be paid or when they are going to be paid.

So you are looking at tens of thousands of lives that are being radically disrupted because of this shutdown. I can tell you that in Vermont, we are very proud of the Vermont National Guard. The Vermont National Guard men and women served very heavily and bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They helped us when we had the terrible Irene floods a few years ago. The thank you that the Vermont National Guard is getting today--this is true all over the country--is that in Vermont some 450 workers at the Vermont National Guard are going to be furloughed. I know many of these people. They are good people. They are hardworking people. They do not deserve this type of behavior from the Federal Government.

This affects people from all over the State, people who are trying to get homes, people who are trying to start businesses. That is not something that should be happening.

Let me just very briefly explain the dynamic of what is going on right here. It is not complicated. The Republicans in the House are dominated by a relatively small group of rightwing extremists.

What the Speaker there has said is that instead of bringing to the floor the bill that we passed here in the Senate, what is called a clean CR that will continue funding the government, instead of putting that bill on the floor of the House and allowing the entire 435 Members of the House to vote on that bill, what he has done is said to the House Republicans: OK, what do you want? The extreme rightwing has dominated that. What they have said is: We want to defund ObamaCare. That is the only legislation that you, Mr. Speaker, can bring to the floor of the House.

This is a moment of enormous importance for the Speaker of the House. He has to determine whether he is the Speaker of the Republican Party or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, whether he is going to be dominated by a minority of one party in one part of the government or whether he will allow the entire House to vote.

What many of observers have made clear is, if he puts that bill on the floor, it will pass and the government will reopen. I hope that he will do that. My political view, my progressive political views are pretty well known. My views on this issue are well known in Vermont and maybe elsewhere in this country. But what I want to do is very briefly to express what some Republicans are saying, people who are not rightwing extremists, who, in fact, have very strong disagreements with the Affordable Care Act but who understand that they cannot hold the American people hostage and they cannot blackmail the government in order to get their way.

So this is not Bernie Sanders talking. These are conservative Republicans, but people who are not rightwing extremists. Let me quote some of my colleagues. These are the public statements they have made. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican Senator from Georgia, this is what he says:

I'd love to [defund ObamaCare] too. But shutting down the

government and playing into the hands of the president

politically is not the right thing to do. Plus, it's going to

do great harm to the American people if we pursue that

course. We've been there. It didn't work.

Senator Dan Coats, Republican from Indiana:

Here's the hard truth: President Obama will not overturn

his signature legislation so long as he is president and the

Democrats have control of the Senate. Along with these

political realities, refusing to pass legislation to keep the

government funded will not stop ObamaCare from going into

effect.

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma:

It's not an achievable strategy. It's creating the false

impression that you can do something when you can't. And it's

dishonest.

Republican Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee. The Washington Post reports that Corker compared shutting down the government to the way buffalo were slaughtered in the Old West. ``I know when you get led into a box canyon what that means . . . Box canyon, here we come.''

Representative Peter King, Republican from New York.

We should not be closing down the government under any

circumstances. That doesn't work, it's wrong, and you know,

ObamaCare passed. We have to try to defund it, we have try to

find ways to repeal it. But the fact is, we shouldn't be

using it as a threat to shut down the government.

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah.

My personal belief is the only way to get rid of ObamaCare

is to be intelligent and smart about it and gradually just

work on it, work it through . . . to expect the government to

shut down is not the way to do it.

Mark Kirk, Republican Senator from Illinois:

I am one of those who says, let's not shut down the

government just because you don't get everything you want.

Senator John McCain, former Republican candidate for President of the United States:

In the United States Senate, we will not repeal, or defund,

ObamaCare. We will not. And to think we can is not rational.

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio:

I do think we need to deal with the underlying problem of

overspending and we have to deal with the problem of

Obamacare, but those ought to be handled outside of the

context of a government shutdown.

Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho:

There isn't anybody that thinks that ObamaCare is going to

get defunded. It cannot happen . . . We were elected to

govern--you don't govern by shutting down the government.

I can go on and on.

There are many Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House who do not like ObamaCare. They understand that we don't shut down the government only to make a point. We don't throw 800,000 workers who work for the Federal Government, whose lives depend on a paycheck, out on the street in order to make a point.

I think Jim Risch--Republican Senator from Idaho--had it right. I will repeat what he said:

There isn't anybody that thinks that ObamaCare is going to

get defunded. It cannot happen. . . . We were elected to

govern--you don't govern by shutting down the government.

Senator Risch is exactly correct.

Where we are right now is that there are many Republicans in the Senate, there are Republicans in the House, and there are millions of Republicans all over the country who say they have disagreements with ObamaCare, but it was passed by the Congress almost 4 years ago and signed by the President. When it was challenged by the Supreme Court, it was upheld as being constitutional. We had a Presidential election where the Affordable Care Act was one of the major issues being debated. President Obama won by 5 million votes. We had Senate races, and Republicans lost two seats in the Senate. They lost seats in the House.

There are sensible Republicans all over the country saying: Look, there are ways to deal with this issue, but don't shut down the government. Don't punish 800,000 workers. Do not deny benefits and services to tens of millions of Americans.

I would like to go to another area and suggest--although I think the Presiding Officer well understands this--that what we are seeing today in terms of the attack on ObamaCare is not only some isolated act on the part of rightwing Republicans. I think many Americans are not aware. People may like ObamaCare or may not like ObamaCare. As we well know, today was the first day the exchange was open. Guess what happened. Millions of people went to the Web site. Guess what. When we have 48 million Americans who have no health insurance and millions more who are in need with high deductibles and copayments and they are given the opportunity to buy insurance, shock of all shocks, many of them are now going to the Web site. Our Republican friends are saying: No, no, we don't want to see that.

My point--and I hope everybody understands this--is that this attack on ObamaCare is only one small part of a rightwing extremist ideology which is incredibly reactionary and which really intends not only to repeal ObamaCare but to repeal virtually every major piece of legislation passed in this country in the last 80 years that protects the interests of the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor, women, the environment, and people who are vulnerable. That is what their agenda is.

I will give a few examples. The Environmental Protection Agency works hard to make sure the air we breathe is clean. There are many rightwing Republicans who don't want only to cut funding for the EPA, they want to abolish the EPA.

We have a major crisis in this country in terms of millions of American workers being forced to work for very low wages. People are working for 8 bucks an hour, 9 bucks an hour. They can't raise a family working for these very low wages. Many of us believe it is important that we raise the minimum wage. Do people know what the rightwing agenda is, the agenda funded by a family like the Koch brothers, a family worth $70 billion that is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into these rightwing extremist groups? Do you know what they say about the minimum wage? They say: Let's abolish the minimum wage.

People think I am kidding. The view now of the majority of the Members, the Republican Members in the Senate and the House, is not only not raising the minimum wage, it is to abolish the concept of the minimum wage. What that means is that if you are living in a high- unemployment area and the wages that are being offered to you by an employer are 3 bucks an hour or 4 bucks an hour, those are the wages you will have to accept because there will be no Federal floor. The Federal floor is $7.25, and that is much too low. Get rid of that, and we will have people working for $3 and $4 an hour.

One of the most significant pieces of Federal legislation ever passed was passed in 1935--Social Security. Today we have over 50 million Americans who are benefiting from Social Security. If you go to the Texas Republican Party platform--their recent platform, and they are one of the most powerful Republican parties in the country--they are pretty up front about what they believe. They want to end Social Security. They want to privatize it. That is their goal.

The Veterans' Administration--and I speak today as chairman of the Veterans' Committee--today we have quite good VA health care through 152 medical centers run by the VA, 900 community-based outreach clinics, many vet centers. VA does, most veterans consider, a pretty good job in providing

health care. Do you know what some Republicans want to do? They want to privatize the Veterans' Administration. Check it out. This is the Texas Republican Party platform, which speaks for Republicans all over this country.

It is not only the VA and it is not only Social Security, it is many other programs. We recently saw our friends in the House cut food stamps by some $4 billion this year. That is what they believe. Meanwhile, we have more people living in poverty today than at any time in the history of the United States. Many want to make devastating cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and many other programs that people in this country are living on.

I will conclude by saying that we could end this crisis in a very few minutes. All that needs to happen is the Speaker of the House has to bring up the clean bill we passed here in the Senate and give all of his Members a chance to vote on it. If he does that, this crisis will be over.

It is morally wrong and it is extremely dangerous from a precedent perspective to allow this government and our President to be blackmailed or for the American people to be held hostage. If we were to succumb to that blackmail today, I can absolutely guarantee that in 2 weeks, when the United States is going to need to pay its debts, and we don't, for the first time in the history of this country, have the money to pay our debts, and when the economists are telling us that if we don't pay our debts, there could be an international economic crisis leading to huge amounts of job loss all over the world, not only for the United States--if we surrender to them now on this issue, they will be back. They will be back and they will say: If you don't cut this and don't cut that, we are not going to allow you to pay the debts the United States owes. It will go on and on. Next year they will come back and they may say: Well, we are not going to fund the government unless you end Social Security or unless you cut Medicaid drastically.

This is not the way a government in a democratic, civilized society can operate. We have our disagreements. God only knows we have that. We have debates. But there is a process.

What the Republicans have not yet recovered from is the simple fact that they lost the Presidential election, they do not have control over the Senate, and they only have one body. They think that from controlling one body they have a right to control the U.S. Government. This is not how it works.

I hope that people all over this country, whether they are conservatives or progressives, Democrats or Republicans, will listen to what some of the sensible Republicans are saying. In essence, what they are saying--and I have read many of the quotes from John McCain and others--is this: Yes, we have differences of opinion, and, yes, some of them disagree strongly with ObamaCare, but there is a process you go through to make those changes. Do not shut down the government, impact the entire economy, throw 800,000 people out of work, and deny services to millions of Americans. That is not the way to run the government in a democratic society.

Let me conclude by hoping very much that the Speaker of the House will recognize that he is the Speaker of the entire House, not only of the Republican Party, and that he will let all of his Members vote on the legislation we passed in the Senate.

I am aware of that.

The point the leader is raising, what the question speaks to is that this is not a game we are playing when we are dealing with whether kids and others get treatment for cancer. What we are dealing with are life- and-death issues. When the government is shut down and agencies such as the National Institutes of Health end cancer research--this is taking life away from people.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Let me make a point for the majority leader. Today was the first day people could go onto the exchanges. Maybe the majority leader would like to explain to the American people that, in fact, some of these Web sites actually crashed because so many people came on board.

What I would say to the majority leader--and I was on the floor the other day reading quotes--when Social Security was first created, we had quotes from Republicans who were talking about the end of life as we know it, slavery coming to America. It is the same thing with Medicare. It is interesting.

I would say to the majority leader that despite all of the anti- Affordable Care Act rhetoric we hear--you would think nobody would be interested in getting into the program--the first day out, over 2 million people went to the Federal Government's Web site. I am not quite sure why our Republican friends think that millions of Americans on the first day should not have the right to take advantage of a program that was passed by Congress.

I wish the American people also to understand that we are going to win this struggle because of the determination of the majority leader, who is standing for tens of millions of Americans who not only want access to affordable health care but do not want to see our government blackmailed by a small number of rightwing extremists.

I thank the majority leader very much for his comments.

Madam President, I wish to concur with much of what my colleague from Vermont just said. Clearly, in our small State a government shutdown will be devastating--devastating for many thousands of Federal employees. If a shutdown continues, it will be devastating for families who have kids in Head Start. If a shutdown continues, it will be devastating for seniors who are on the Meals On Wheels Program and for pregnant women and young mothers and their kids who are on the WIC Program. This is going to hit Vermont hard, and it is going to hit America hard, and this is something that should not be taking place.

This debate is not about the Affordable Care Act. That is something which should be debated. I think it can be improved. What this debate is about is blackmail and hostage-taking.

What my Republican colleagues--especially the rightwing extremists in the House--are upset about is not so much ObamaCare; what they are upset about is that they lost the election in November. President Obama won by some 5 million votes. They lost seats. The Republicans lost seats in the Senate and they lost some seats in the House.

What they are upset about is that they cannot legislatively accomplish what they want to through the normal legislative process. What legislation is about is the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, they both get together, work on something, compromise, and then the President signs it. They do not have the support to do that, so what they have now concluded is the only way they can go forward is to say: If we don't get our way, if we don't shut down the government or kill ObamaCare or delay ObamaCare--that is the only game in town. That is all we are going to do. We can't do it the normal way.

So what they are doing is holding the Congress and the American people hostage. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable not only in terms of the Affordable Care Act, but let's be very clear: If we were to succumb and agree to this type of blackmail, does anybody not believe that 2 weeks from now, when the United States needs to pay its debts, we will be threatened and for the first time in the history of this country we will be in a situation where we may not be able to pay our debts, which economists tell us could lead not only to a major financial and economic crisis in this country, but it could impact the entire world.

So if we say: Hey, no problem, we are going to yield to your blackmail now, what do you think will happen in 2 weeks? They will be back then. And next year when we go through this process again, it may not be the Affordable Care Act, it may be Social Security. Many of our rightwing extremist Republicans want to end Social Security. If we go through this process and submit to this blackmail now, I certainly will not be surprised if a year from now this same group of people says: Hey, look, you are not going to have a budget unless we end Social Security or we end Medicare as we know it right now.

So I think submitting and allowing blackmail to take place is very bad public policy. If Republicans or anybody else wants to have a discussion about how we can improve the Affordable Care Act--and I certainly think we can because I think it is too complicated in many respects, I think it leaves many people still uninsured. We are the only country in the industrialized world that does not provide health care to all of our people as a right, and ObamaCare doesn't do that. So I want to see some improvements made in it, but let's do it in the normal legislative process, and let's not say that if we don't get our way, we are going to shut down the government; we are going to impact hundreds of thousands of Federal workers; we are going to impact many vulnerable people who are dependent on Federal programs.

Another point I wish to make is that we hear from some of our Republican colleagues that the world is about to come to an end because the Affordable Care Act will be implemented. But it is important to understand that many of these same arguments have been made in the past around the time or shortly after major pieces of legislation were passed which today are enormously popular.

Right now we have over 50 million people who benefit from Social Security. Social Security is an enormously important and popular program in this country. But let me take you back to April of 1935 when Social Security was just passed, and I will quote what some Republicans had to say about Social Security at that time.

April 19, 1935, Republican Congressman John Taber said this about Social Security:

Never in the history of the world has any measure been

brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business

recovery, to enslave workers and to prevent any possibility

of the employers providing work for people.

Ask most working people in Hawaii and in Vermont whether Social Security is enslaving them. I think they

would not understand what you are talking about because since its inception Social Security has been enormously successful in reducing the poverty rate among seniors.

But it was not only Congressman Taber in 1935. Here is what Republican Congressman James Wadsworth told the American people:

This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the

political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to

threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the

pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.

The world was just about coming to an end in 1935 because they passed Social Security.

Republican Senator Daniel Hastings in 1935 called Social Security ``un-American'' and told the American people that Social Security would ``end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European.''

I am not sure what that means but looks pretty scary.

On May 6, 1935, former President Herbert Hoover said:

As a matter of economic security alone, we can find it in

our jails. The slaves had it. Our people are not ready to be

turned into a national zoo, our citizens classified, labeled

and directed by a form of self-approved keepers.

That is a former President of the United States on Social Security.

It is not widely known, but in 1936 the Republicans campaigned to repeal Social Security. That year the Republican nominee for President said that Social Security is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted, and wastefully financed. He called Social Security a fraud on the working man and a cruel hoax and said: We must repeal Social Security. The Republican Party has pledged to do this.

It has turned out not quite to be the case. It turned out that Social Security will probably go down in history as maybe the most important and successful program ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it plays an enormous role in keeping seniors out of poverty, helps people with disabilities, helps widows and orphans. It has been enormously successful and enormously popular despite all of these cries about how it was going to destroy our Nation. Maybe we should learn something from these prophets of doom.

Furthermore, we have a similar situation regarding Medicare. In the fairly dysfunctional health care system we currently have today where so many people are uninsured, so many people have high copayments, so many people have high deductibles, and yet we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the other industrialized nations with guaranteed health care to all of their people--in 1965 Congress passed Medicare. Today Medicare is a very popular program. Today nearly 50 million seniors are receiving guaranteed health care benefits through Medicare. But when Medicare legislation was being debated in 1965, this is what some of the Republicans from Washington had to say. Remember, today Medicare is quite a popular program, generally regarded as a successful health care program for seniors.

On April 8, 1965, Republican Congressman Durward Hall had this to say about Medicare:

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.

I don't know where Mr. Hall is today, but I think if he were to ask the seniors throughout this country whether they are suffering from Medicare or whether they approve of Medicare, I think most of them would say they approve of Medicare.

In terms of the Medicare debate we had on July 8, 1965, Republican Senator Milward Simpson said this about Medicare:

This program could destroy private initiative for our aged

to protect themselves with insurance against the cost of

illness. . . . Presently, over 60 percent of our older

citizens purchase hospital and medical insurance without

Government assistance. This private effort would cease if

government efforts were given to all older citizens.

In 1965 Congressman Joel Broyhill wrote:

Medicare would initiate what would ultimately become a

Federal monopoly in regard to the financing and rendering of

health care with respect to our aged to the detriment of

endeavors of the private sector; this would impair the

quality of health care, retard the advancement of medical

science, and displace private insurance.

In 1961 Ronald Reagan warned that ``Medicare will usher in Federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. If you don't speak out against Medicare, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in America when men were free.''

On and on it goes.

So the point to be made is not that the Affordable Care Act does not have its share of problems--it does--and not that it will take some work to implement it--it will--but what we have heard from Republicans in the past whenever a major government initiative was introduced was constant doomsday discussion about how the world would collapse.

Let me conclude by getting back to my major point that, in fact, this debate really is not about the Affordable Care Act. We can argue about the Affordable Care Act. We can change the Affordable Care Act. All of that is certainly legitimate. What this debate is about is whether 20 or 30 extreme rightwing Members of the House of Representatives are able to hold our entire government hostage. Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers, many of whom are trying to bring up their families, are going to lose their paychecks, lose their jobs. People who are going to be applying for Social Security, for Medicare, for veterans benefits will have that process significantly slowed down. Depending on how long the shutdown continues, if it takes place--and I certainly hope it doesn't--it will mean that Head Start centers will be closing and other important programs will not be available to the people who need them.

Once again, this is not a discussion about the Affordable Care Act. What this is about is whether a small number of Members of the House are able to use their position to blackmail the American people and the President and the Senate and say: If you do not do what we could not accomplish--what they could not accomplish legislatively--we are going do render terrible harm to our country.

Furthermore, as bad as the government shutdown may be--and I certainly hope it does not take place--what we are looking at in 2 weeks is something that may be even worse. If some get their way, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, we, the largest economy on Earth, may not pay our bills. That will certainly cause a huge eruption not only in our country but throughout the world in terms of markets, rising interest rates, and all kinds of terrible things.

Once again, their understanding of government is, well, I guess it is too bad we lost the election for the White House, we lost seats in this Senate, and we lost seats in the House. That is too bad, but we are still going to do what we want to do regardless of what the election was about.

We cannot allow that to happen because if we do, it is not going to stop now. It will continue and continue.

So my hope is that Speaker Boehner will do something he should do. He is not the Speaker of the Republican Party; he is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. I suspect very strongly that if he put the bill that we passed on the floor of the House, he would have virtually all Democrats and a number of Republicans voting for it, and a majority would say: We are not going to shut down the U.S. Government.

So my request to Speaker Boehner is let the people in his body--all of the people, not just Republicans--vote on what we passed here. If he does that, I suspect we will not see a government shutdown and we will have some common sense over there.

Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I wish to say a few words to try to reflect what I think tens of millions of Americans are feeling at 11:25 tonight with the threat of a government shutdown in 35 minutes.

What I want to say is that this discussion is not about ObamaCare at all. What this discussion, debate, and conflict is about is that our Republican friends in the House are trying to annul the elections that took place last November. Some of them were shocked that Obama won and that he won by 5 million votes. They haven't gotten over it. They were shocked they lost two seats in the Senate. They haven't gotten over that. They were shocked they lost some seats in the House.

What they are saying to the American people tonight is: Maybe we lost the Presidential election. Maybe we lost seats in the Senate and in the House. It doesn't matter. We can now bring the government to a shutdown, throw some 800,000 hard-working Americans out on the street, and we are going to get our way no matter what.

I think that is a horrendous precedent to be established for this body. Let's be clear. If we surrendered to that hostage-taking tonight, without a shadow of a doubt these guys would be back 2 weeks from today. At that point they would say to us: Here is our laundry list of demands. If you don't give us what we want, we are going to bring down the financial system of the United States of America, bring down the world financial system, and if it leads to a worldwide recession, well, that is the way it goes. But what is most important is we get our way and we don't care about the repercussions.

Next year I can see these same guys coming to the floor of the House and saying: You know what. We want to abolish Social Security. We think Social Security is a bad idea, and if you don't allow us to do that, we are going to stop the government again. And on and on it goes.

Ultimately, what we are dealing with tonight is an extraordinarily antidemocratic act. Every Member of the Senate has strong feelings. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. But when they are in the minority--they do not control the White House, they do not control the Senate--they cannot force the American people to give them what they want.

The irony is that because we have folks in the Republican Party in the House who believe we should abolish Social Security, end Medicare as we know it, privatize the VA, eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency--they do not believe that the function of government is to protect the interests of the vast majority of the people. So these guys are sitting and saying: My God. The government may shut down. What a great idea.

If you don't believe the EPA should protect us from pollution, then isn't it a good idea that we not have an EPA starting tomorrow? If you don't believe in veterans health care, isn't it a good idea that we should slow down the processing of veterans' claims?

So for these guys who do not believe that in a democratic, civilized society we should have a government which represents the people, then from their point of view what is happening is, in fact, quite good.

What particularly angers me, and why the American people have such contempt for what we are doing in Washington is as we speak--everybody knows this--the middle class in this country is disappearing. The Census Bureau study came out last week--if you can believe this--median family income, that family right in the middle of American society, is earning less money today than it earned 24 years ago. All of the increases in technology and productivity doesn't mean anything.

Poverty is at 46.5 million, and that is highest on record. Youth unemployment is 20 percent. Real unemployment is 14 percent. What do the American people want us to be doing? Everybody knows what they want us to do. Every poll gives us the answer.

They want us to start creating the millions of jobs this economy desperately needs. They want us to raise the minimum wage because they know millions of people in this country cannot make it on $8 or $9 an hour. They

want us to improve our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, and our wastewater plants. They want us to bring about real tax reform. One out of four major corporations today is not paying a nickel in taxes, and they want us to change that as well.

In my view, for the future of this country, we cannot allow a handful of rightwing extremists to hold this Nation hostage. The American people have to stand tall and tell them that, yes, in a democratic society, people have differences of opinion. Yes, we can make improvements in ObamaCare. But we don't go forward by trying to destroy or bring the U.S. Government to a halt.

I think it is important for the American people now to stand and demand democracy here in Washington, and tell a handful of rightwing extremists they cannot get their way by holding this government in a hijacked manner.

With that, I yield the floor.

Let me begin by saying I think a debate over ObamaCare, a debate over health care, is good for the Nation. As I think many Americans understand, the United States is the only country in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to all of our people.

Today, before the initiation of ObamaCare, we have 48 million people who have no health insurance. I would tell my good friend from Texas that the State of Texas, I think, ranked first in the country in the percentage of their people under 65 who have no health insurance, one out of four.

George W. Bush was President for 8 years. Where were the ideas about how we provide health care to all of our people. It is not only 48 million people today who have no health insurance; there are many more who have huge deductibles which prevent them from going to the doctor. They have high copayments. At the end of the day, in this dysfunctional health care system we have, we are spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other nation, many of which have better health care outcomes than we do in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality, and the treatment of a number of diseases.

In my view, ObamaCare is a step forward, but we have to make significant improvements. That is a good discussion and debate to have.

One thing that is absolutely certain is you do not hold the American people hostage by threatening to shut down the government or, for the first time in the history of our country, not pay our bills, bringing this country and perhaps the entire world into a major financial crisis. That is what you don't do.

ObamaCare was passed with 60 votes in the Senate, it was passed in the House, and it was signed by the President. ObamaCare was challenged in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional.

There was an election 1 year ago on this very issue, one of the major issues in the campaign. The Republican candidate said: Let's defund ObamaCare. He lost the election. Republicans lost seats in the Senate. They lost seats in the House.

This is what democracy is all about. What democracy is not about is a handful of the Members of the House of Representatives, extreme rightwing Republicans, saying if we do not get our way, we are prepared to punish tens of millions of Americans. Yes, we lost the election; yes, we lost seats in the House and the Senate, but we are prepared to bring this government down; we are prepared to cause, perhaps, a major global financial crisis unless we get our way.

That is not what the American system is about. That is not what democracy is about. If we want to debate about how we improve ObamaCare, that is a good debate. Let's have it. Let's not tell men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces, who today are putting their lives on the line to defend us, that they are not going to get paid. Let us not tell police officers here in Washington and elsewhere they may not get paid. Let's not tell working families who take their little kids to Head Start so they can then go out to work that program may be killed. Let's not tell senior citizens, who are on the Meals on Wheels Program who can't leave their homes and depend upon a meal, let's not punish them because we have a small number of extreme rightwingers who want to get their way at the expense of millions and millions of people.

Let's have a debate, continue the debate. ObamaCare will provide health insurance to 20 million more Americans, a good step forward, but 28 million more remain uninsured.

Many of the trade unions are concerned about some provisions, and I share those views. Let's change that, let's improve it. Let us not shut down the U.S. Government and make us look like fools throughout the entire world because a handful of rightwing extremists are so determined to try to destroy this President.

Senator Cruz was on the floor the other day. I appreciate anyone--I was on the floor a couple of years ago for 8\1/2\ hours, and he was on the floor for 21 hours. That is tough. I respect anyone who can do that. I disagreed with most of what he did say, but he did say one thing which I think was right; that is, we need a serious debate about fundamental issues.

What I believe very strongly is that this debate about ObamaCare is kind of small change, nickel and dime, compared to where many of our rightwing Republicans wish to go. It is important we have that debate because I think the American people are not understanding the role of multibillionaires, such as the Koch brothers, worth some $70 billion, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party. This is what this debate is about; it is not about ObamaCare. I will give some of the issues we should be debating. Senator Cruz was right.

The Texas Republican Party platform calls for an immediate and orderly transition away from Social Security; in other words, they want to kill Social Security. That is a good debate. Let's have it.

How many of the American people think we should end Social Security and go back to the days of the 1920s, when the elderly people were the poorest people in America. That is what rightwing Republicans want to do. Let us have that debate.

The Republicans in Texas--again, their view represents a whole lot of folks here in the Senate and in the House--want to privatize veterans' health care. I am the chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and I will tell you very strongly the veterans of America want to improve and expand the VA health care system, not privatize it. But let us have that debate.

Quoting from the Texas platform, the Republican Party in Texas believes--and, again, reflecting the views, I believe, of a strong majority of Republicans here in Washington--``We believe the minimum wage should be repealed.''

The minimum wage today is $7.25 an hour. We have millions and millions of workers who are trying to get by on $8 an hour, $9 an hour. I think the minimum wage should be significantly expanded--raised. Many Republicans say let's abolish the minimum wage. Do you know what that means? It means in Maine, in high unemployment areas; in Detroit, in high unemployment areas; and in Vermont, in high unemployment areas, what the employer will say is: Look, there ain't no jobs around here. You want to work, here is 3 bucks an hour. But we have the government out of your lives. There is no longer a minimum wage.

They consider that freedom. I consider that wage slavery. Let us have the debate about whether we should abolish the minimum wage, abolish Social Security.

The Ryan Republican budget in the House a couple of years ago wanted to end Medicare as we know it and create a voucher system. Here is a check, 8,000 bucks. You got cancer, good luck. Here is your $8,000 check. Go to the doctor, to the hospital, you will get good care--for about 2 days--and then we don't know what happens to you.

We are going to end Medicare as we know it. We are going to make devastating cuts in Medicaid. We are going to give tax breaks to the rich at a time when the rich are doing phenomenally and the middle class is collapsing. Let us have that debate. That is a good debate to have.

It is very interesting; there was a CBS/New York Times poll that came out the other day absolutely consistent with every other poll I have seen. What these polls do is they say to the American people: What do you think are the most important issues facing America? What should Congress be focusing on? You know what. They are not talking about health care. They are not talking about ObamaCare. They are not talking about taxes. What the American people are saying is: We need jobs.

Real unemployment today is close to 14 percent. Youth unemployment is higher. We need to create millions of

jobs. Where is the debate? We bring forward ideas about rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, creating jobs, moving to a more energy efficient society, and creating jobs. Where are their ideas on jobs? They do not have any. All they can say is: Let's give more tax breaks to billionaires. One out of four corporations doesn't pay any taxes. Let's give more tax breaks to the rich and to the corporations. Trickle-down economics has not worked.

What the American people also understand is that most of the new jobs that are being created are low-wage jobs. Often they are part-time jobs--a trend, by the way, that has been going on for many, many years, well before ObamaCare. Major employers didn't need to think too hard to figure out if you hire people for 25 or 28 hours a week you don't have to provide them with benefits. Let us discuss about how we create decent wages in this country.

The last point I will make.

Maybe the most important discussion we should have is ending and overturning this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which gives the billionaires in this country the ability to control what goes on here in the Congress, forcing Members of the House and Senate to raise unbelievable sums of money.

So there is a lot to be debated. But one thing we should not be debating is shutting down the United States Government in order to achieve a narrow political goal.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, September is Suicide Prevention Month.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Veteran's Affairs, I would like to take a moment to discuss the importance of suicide prevention and ways in which we can all help our Nation's veterans cope with the invisible wounds of war.

Serving in defense of our Nation, particularly during a time of war, can place tremendous strains on servicemen and women, sometimes leading to mental health conditions ranging from mild depression to severe post-traumatic stress disorder. These conditions are reasonable reactions to very abnormal situations.

While behavioral health conditions rarely lead to suicide, it is clear the consequences of failing to properly address and treat these conditions are dire. According to a report released earlier this year by the Department of Veterans Affairs, 22 veterans take their own lives each day. This is tragic and unacceptable.

For veterans and their families struggling with mental health conditions, there is hope. Help is available through VA and dozens of non-profit organizations who have made it their mission to serve those who have served our Nation.

VA has made great strides to improve its suicide prevention efforts. As of June, the Department has hired over 1,600 new mental health professionals to provide care and treatment to our veterans. These added positions are essential as VA works to meet the requirements established by Congress to provide initial mental health evaluations within 24 hours and comprehensive evaluations within 14 days of a veteran's request. Moreover, VA has put a priority on patient-centered care, which includes mental health as part of primary care and involves family members in the treatment process.

Additionally, VA operates the Veterans Crisis Line, a critical resource for veterans and their loved ones. The Veterans Crisis Line is a toll-free, confidential resource that connects veterans in distress with qualified, caring VA responders. Family members and friends can also use this resource to learn how to recognize the signs of suicide, speak to a suicide prevention coordinator, and receive information regarding the services available in their area.

The Veterans Crisis Line has a history of success. Approximately 93 percent of all Veterans Crisis Line referrals are made to callers with a history of using VA health care facilities in the past 12 months. Veterans who call the hotline are more likely to access intervention and treatment services following a rescue through the hotline. More importantly, those who have been rescued or received a referral for follow up care have a reduced rate of repeated suicide attempts over a 12-month period.

In addition to VA, veteran service organizations, non-profit organizations, and local health care providers can also help. In my home State of Vermont, the Vermont Veterans Outreach Program, operated by the Vermont National Guard, has played a critical role in supporting the needs of Guard members and veterans, and helping to prevent suicide. I am proud to have secured the initial funding to establish this program in 2007 and am thankful for their efforts. Aside from working directly with veterans and their families to determine their needs, the outreach program provides a liaison to help these individuals better navigate the VA system. Team members meet frequently with VA officials to ensure they are aware of any new VA initiatives in order to better inform veterans and their families of the options for care and support available. The Vermont Veterans Outreach Program has helped countless veterans return from war to become successful contributing members of their communities. I am tremendously proud of the outreach programs' work and am pleased other States have begun similar programs.

Just as these organizations provide assistance, friends and family can also ensure veterans receive the help they need. We must each be aware of the signs, symptoms, and risk factors of suicide. We must not be afraid to take action to assist friends and neighbors in crisis. Suicide is preventable and we all have a role to play. Providing support can mean lending a compassionate ear, listening for concerning answers, and guiding veterans to resources that can help.

Even one veteran taking his or her life is too many. As a long standing advocate for veterans, I will continue to work to counter issues that prevent veterans and their families from seeking care, such as the stigma surrounding mental illness, negative perceptions of treatment and other barriers that may result in prematurely dropping out of treatment.

I ask that my colleagues join me in committing themselves to ensuring that the brave men and women who have worn our Nation's uniform receive timely access to high quality mental health care. Our veterans have already sacrificed so much in defense of our country. They should not be left to fend for themselves when coping with the invisible wounds of war.

Mr. President, I want to make a few points this morning and say what I think is on the minds of many Americans.

There is a reason why the favorability rating of Congress is at 10 percent or less, and that is because the middle class of this country-- the vast majority of our people--is hurting. They are worried about what kind of future their kids are going to have, and they look at Washington and they ask: What is going on?

Our Republican friends in the House on 42 separate occasions attempted to defund ObamaCare. And on 42 separate occasions, they failed. There was a Presidential election in which this issue of whether we expand health care to another 20 million Americans--whether we end the obscenity of preexisting conditions, where people who have had serious health problems are denied health care; whether we make sure kids 26 years of age or younger are on their parents' health insurance plan, whether we do more for disease prevention, et cetera-- was debated very heavily. Guess what. The Republican candidate who wanted to defund ObamaCare lost that election. Now, quite incredibly, what the Republicans are saying is: Yes, we failed 42 times, we lost the Presidential election, but now we are prepared to shut down the entire government unless we end this legislation.

Well, that is not going to happen. They are not going to end ObamaCare. Surely we need to improve it. I myself believe we need a Medicare-for-all single-payer program. And let us discuss how we can improve the program, how we can join the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteeing health care to all people as a right of citizenship, and how we end the absurdity in this country of spending twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country.

My Republican friends have nothing to offer on this issue. We have 48 million Americans with no health insurance. What are the Republican ideas? They do not exist.

The point here is that no matter what your view may be about ObamaCare, it is incredibly irresponsible and reckless, and makes this country look incredibly foolish to the rest of the world, that they are prepared to shut down the government unless they get their way on this issue. But most importantly, all over America, while people are struggling, they are seeing this absurd debate about Republican efforts to shut down the government unless they defund ObamaCare.

People are saying: What about us? While you have this silly political fight, what are you doing to improve our lives, what are you doing to address the fundamental economic realities in this country, which is that the middle class of this great country is disappearing, more people are now living in poverty than at any time in history--46\1/2\ million--and the gap between the very wealthy and everybody else is growing wider.

We have this unbelievable economic situation where, while the vast majority of Americans have seen a decline in their standard of living, people on top are doing phenomenally well.

A report that came out last week from the Census Bureau quite incredibly tells us that in terms of median family income, that family right in the middle of American society now is earning less income than they did 24 years ago. Despite all of the increases in productivity, despite all of the new technology, that family in the middle is earning less income than 24 years ago. A typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000 since 1999 after adjusting for inflation. The average male worker earned $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. The average female worker earned $1,700 less last year than she did in 2007. Meanwhile, people on the top do incredibly well. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent, and we now have by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth.

We have a middle class that is disappearing, poverty is very high, and people on top are doing phenomenally well, 48 million Americans without any health insurance. The Republican solution to this plan is to bring down the government unless they can defund ObamaCare.

I think it is important for the American people to understand--and it is not discussed enough on the floor of the Senate or in the media-- what the long-term plan of the Republican Party is. Is it simply to defund ObamaCare? No, it is not. Is it simply to shut down the government? No, it is not. It is important to understand what this rightwing, extremist ideology is all about and to have a serious discussion as to whether the American people want to go forward in that direction, which is a lot more than just defunding ObamaCare or shutting down the government.

The Texas Republican Party every year publishes a platform. What is interesting about it is not just that Texas is a very large conservative State, but the ideas that emanate from Texas often become mainstream in the Republican Party a few years later. I think it is important to understand what, long-term, the Republican Party wants to do. Let me tell you some of the positions that were in the Republican Party platform in 2012, so we understand that what is being discussed-- some cuts in Social Security, voucherization of Medicare, massive cuts in food stamps--is not the endgame. That is the beginning of the game. This is from the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform.

We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system

of private pensions based on the concept of individual

retirement accounts and gradually phasing out the Social

Security tax.

I give them credit for being upfront and straightforward about the issue that is ending Social Security. That is it. Social Security has been the most effective and successful program in modern American history. It has taken tens of millions of seniors out of poverty. Basically, what the Texas Republican Party is saying is, We don't want to just cut Social Security, we want to end it. If you are old, what happens to you when you are 75 years of age and have no income coming, that is not their worry.

Furthermore, speaking now as the chairman of the Veterans' Committee, I want every veteran in America to understand long-term goals. This is from the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform: ``We support the privatization of veteran's healthcare.''

In other words, we have some 6 million veterans who are receiving good, quality health care at the VA. I myself think we should expand the program. There are at least 1 million veterans out there who are uninsured right now who could utilize VA health care. I myself think the eligibility requirements are too stringent. We should bring more people into the system. But our Republican friends in Texas, becoming mainstream, want to end veterans health care.

Next point:

We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities

are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution;

including the Departments of Education and Energy.

The vast majority of people in the scientific community who study global warming think that global warming is a crisis today that is only going to get worse, and the only way to deal with that issue is having a concrete policy. They want to abolish the Department of Education. Millions of young people all over this country cannot afford the cost of college today. Low-income kids, middle-class kids are struggling educationally all over this country. They want to abolish the Department of Education.

Furthermore, ``We . . . oppose . . . mandatory kindergarten.'' One of the great crises in this country is childcare and the crisis of early childhood education. Working families in Vermont and all over this country are having a hard time getting affordable childcare.

``We believe the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished''--not cut but abolished, so we can go back to the days when companies could throw their garbage into our rivers and streams, pollute the air, make kids sick, and get away with it with impunity because there is nobody there saying it is against the law. Nobody can enforce the law. They want to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and endanger the health and well-being of kids and Americans all over this country.

Furthermore, ``We recommend repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with the goal of abolishing the I.R.S. and replacing it with a national sales tax collected by the States.''

What does that mean? It means the ending of any form of progressive taxation. As I pointed out earlier, the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. The middle class is disappearing. What that means is we end the ability to ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. We put the tax burden on the middle class and working families--so lower taxes for the rich, raise it for the middle class and working families.

``We favor abolishing the capital gains tax [and the estate tax].'' The estate tax applies to the very richest people in this country. Why not abolish it and put the burden of taxation on working families?

Here is one that I think many Americans don't appreciate where they are coming from. I hope very much that this Congress will begin to address the huge crisis facing tens of millions of workers who are working for starvation wages. The bottom line is that one of the reasons poverty in America is increasing is that people can't make it on $7.25, $8, $9 an hour. We have to raise the minimum wage. It is now $7.25 nationally. We have to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

There can be an honest debate about how much higher the minimum wage should go. I understand it. I think California has recently raised it to $10 an hour. The State of Washington has it higher. My own State of Vermont has it higher. We can have that debate. But this is what everybody in America should understand: In terms of debate with my Republican colleagues, that debate will not be how high we raise the minimum wage above $7.25. This is what the Texas Republican Party platform in 2012 says: ``We believe the minimum wage should be repealed.'' It

turns out that more and more of my colleagues in the Senate have been upfront about that.

What does that mean in the real world? What it means in those areas of our country where unemployment is extremely high and there is going to be a lot of competition for jobs, what employers will say is: Do you want to work? We are going to give you $3.50 an hour. If you don't want that, I have that person over there who is prepared to take that job because I have a line of people out there who are unemployed who are prepared to work for any wage--and we no longer are going to have a floor on wages in America. That is what the Texas Republican Party believes. That is what more and more of my colleagues believe.

The point I am making this morning is that the fight we are having right now over shutting down the government, the debate I am sure will ensue shortly after about whether we raise the debt ceiling and whether, for the first time in the history of the United States, we don't pay our bills, causing not only a national financial crisis but an international financial crisis--all of these issues are related to something that is much larger; that is, the transformation of American society in a radically different way than it is today. Almost without exception, what my Republican colleagues want to do now is take us back into the 1920s, where working people had virtually no protection at all on the job, no minimum wage, no job safety protection, where Social Security didn't exist, where Medicare didn't exist, so that if you were old and you got sick, your future was not very bright. If you were poor and you got sick, you had nothing. They want to take us back to a time when a handful of corporations and wealthy people controlled the economic and political life of this Nation.

I do not believe that is where the American people want to go. I believe the American people want us to start focusing on issues of relevance to them; that is, the understanding that we need to create millions of decent-paying jobs by, among other approaches, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, the need to create jobs by making this country more energy efficient, so we can lower fuel bills and cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. What the American people want us to do is focus on the crisis of low wages in this country, to raise the minimum wage. They want us to make college education more affordable. They want us to end these horrendous loopholes that enable major multinational corporations to, in some cases, pay nothing in Federal taxes.

I think the time is long overdue for this Congress to start representing the working families of this country, the middle class of this country, and not simply wealthy campaign contributors.

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

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

Mr. President, there is a lot of concern all over this country about what is going on in Washington in terms of the possibility that the United States, for the first time in its history, may not pay its debts and what that means to the American economy, what it means to the world economy, and what it means to the international financial system. There is a great deal of concern about the possibility that on October 1, the U.S. Government may shut down because we have some rightwing extremists in the House who want to, among other things, abolish legislation passed 4 years ago--the Affordable Care Act--and throw something else in there.

Before I get to those issues, I wish to speak about the reality of what is going on in the economy today. What I want to do is something that is not done often enough, and that is to ask where some of our rightwing colleagues are really coming from. What are their goals?

Fine, they want to shut down the government on October 1. OK, so they don't want to, for the first time in the history of America, pay our bills. But what else do they want? What is this rightwing ideology which has taken over the House? That is an issue that we do not talk about as much as we should.

I wish to begin my discussion by looking at the reality of what is going on in the American economy and why people are so angry and frustrated that the government is not responding to their needs--and they have every reason to be angry.

The Census Bureau reported the other day a rather extraordinary fact, a very depressing fact; that is, in terms of median family income--what the typical American family right in the middle of our economy is experiencing--that family made less money last year than it did 24 years ago. Twenty-four years have come and gone, people have worked so hard, and after 24 years they are now earning less money as a family than they did back in 1989.

Further, what the Census Bureau told us is the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000 since 1999, after adjusting for inflation. So if people are angry in New Mexico and if they are angry in California, that is why. They are working hard and their income is going down.

The average male worker made $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. How is that for progress? Less money last year, male worker, than 44 years ago. The average female worker earned $1,700 less last year than she did in 2007--going down. A record-breaking 46.5 million Americans are now living in poverty. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, at almost 22 percent. A higher percentage of American kids live in poverty now than was the case in 1965. In other words, we are moving but we are moving in the wrong direction.

Meanwhile, the people on top, the wealthiest people in this country, are doing phenomenally well. That is the major point that has to be made over and over. This is not an earthquake or a tsunami that has hit everybody, we are all in this together and everybody is struggling. Not the case. The wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well.

Last week we learned that 95 percent of the new income generated in this country from 2009 to 2012 went to the top 1 percent. That is a phenomenal statistic. All of the new income generated--95 percent of it--went to the wealthiest 1 percent. Earlier this week

Forbes Magazine reported that the wealthiest 400 Americans in this country are now worth a record-breaking $2 trillion. My colleagues can do the arithmetic. That is an extraordinary concentration of wealth in this country that we have not seen since before the Great Depression.

The richest 400 Americans now own more wealth than the bottom half of America--over 150 million Americans. One family--and this is not what I learned in the history books when I was growing up about what America was supposed to be like--but one family, the Walton family, owner of Walmart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. Corporate profits are at an all-time high while wages as a share of the economy are at a record low.

Wall Street, whose greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior caused this massive economic downturn--their CEOs, their executives, are doing phenomenally well. In fact, CEOs on Wall Street are on track to make more money this year than they did in 2009. Believe me, they have recovered, they are doing great, while the middle class of this country is disappearing.

That is an overview of the reality facing our country: The middle class is disappearing, poverty is at an all-time high, and the people on top are doing phenomenally well.

Now I wish to go from that reality to speak about what rightwing extremism is really about, and it is much more than shutting down the government; it is much more than not paying the debts we owe and causing a major financial crisis.

Let me suggest to my colleagues--and I think they already know--that if we delve into what some of our colleagues here in the Senate but mostly in the House believe, we will find what they believe is--forget the Affordable Care Act which they want to repeal; that is nickels and dimes--what they are really all about is repealing every significant piece of legislation passed in the last 80 years which protects the needs of the middle class, working families, the elderly, the kids, and lower income people. You name the piece of legislation, they either want to repeal it entirely or they want to make massive cuts in those programs.

Let me name what those programs are. Social Security. Some of them believe Social Security is unconstitutional. It is not just that they want to cut Social Security; they don't believe in the concept of Social Security.

The same thing with health care on the part of the Federal Government; Medicare, Medicaid. Why should the Federal Government be involved in those programs? That is not the role of the Federal Government. Let's abolish Medicare, abolish Medicaid. If a person is 70 years of age and they don't have a lot of money and no health insurance, which Medicare provides, what happens to them? My colleagues can tell me. What happens if you are 70 and you are diagnosed with cancer and you don't have health insurance? Everybody knows the end of the story. You die. Well, that is the way life goes because we are all in it for ourselves. We don't believe the government should provide health insurance to all people.

If I am a multimillionaire and I get sick, my kids get sick, I have the best health care in the world. But if I am a struggling, middle- class person, working-class person, lower income person, hey, the government should not be involved in those areas.

Minimum wage. Many of us believe, and the overwhelming majority of the American people believe, that the minimum wage today, at about $7.25 an hour, the Federal minimum wage, is too low. I wish to applaud the Governor and the legislature in California for raising their minimum wage to $10. But right now we are at about $7.25 for the Federal Government. Do people know what most of our colleagues here believe? It is not just that they are opposed to raising the minimum wage; they want to abolish the concept of the minimum wage. That is the fact. The American people don't know that.

What does that mean? It means if a person is living in a high unemployment area where a lot of people are struggling for a few jobs and an employer says, The best I can pay is $3.50 an hour--that is what I can pay--I have to take that. People think I am kidding. I am not kidding. A majority of the Republicans, to the best of my knowledge, now believe in abolishing the concept of the minimum wage.

Environmental protection. We have made some real progress in recent years--not enough, but we have made some progress. When we go to New York City, California, Los Angeles, the air is cleaner. We have cleaned up a lot of rivers. We have told companies they can't put their crap and their toxins into rivers and waterways; they can't put it up in the air so the kids breathe it. We have made some progress on that. Some of our Republican friends say, It is not that we are just opposed to this or that piece of legislation, let's abolish the EPA. Let's abolish the ability of the American people to protect their health.

Let me quote something, and I can quote a lot of sources. I can quote many of the statements made by some of our colleagues, but I want to go to the platform of the 2012 Texas Republican Party. Why do I want to go there? Because, in fact, Texas is a large State. The Republican Party in Texas is very powerful. But, also, the ideas that come from Texas, to be fair to the State of Texas, end up spreading all over this country, especially in Republican circles.

I wish to read some of the proposals in the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform. Texas, one of our largest States, controlled by Republicans right now: ``We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.''

In English, what that means is they believe in the privatization of Social Security, and people, if they have the money, can invest on Wall Street and do what they want. That is the Texas Republican Party platform.

What else do they say? I want veterans--and I speak as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee--to listen to this one: ``We support the privatization of veterans health care.'' In other words, they would abolish the Veterans' Administration. We have some 6 million veterans today getting pretty good health care at the VA. Yet at the mainstream of rightwing extremism in this country is the Texas Republican Party that believes we should abolish the VA health care system.

Furthermore, what they are saying is: ``We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution; including the Department of Education and the Department of Energy.''

Goodbye, Department of Education, goodbye, Federal aid to education, title I, and many other important programs that are supporting public education in America: Goodbye.

``We . . . oppose . . . mandatory kindergarten.'' Right now it is widely regarded that the United States has the worst early childhood education system of any major country on Earth. People can't find affordable early childhood education. Their proposal is to abolish mandatory kindergarten.

I spoke about this earlier: ``We believe the Environmental Protection Agency should be abolished.'' No problem. If a company wants to put toxins into the rivers and the lakes and the air, go for it because we have no agency that is going to stop them.

``We recommend repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with the goal of abolishing the I.R.S. and replacing it with a national sales tax collected by the States.''

In English, what that means is, what they want to do is move to regressive taxes, ending all forms of progressive taxation. So they want working people, middle-class people, to pay more in taxes, while the wealthy pay less.

``We favor abolishing the capital gains tax [and the estate tax],'' which, of course, falls most heavily on wealthy people.

Here is what they say--and I have to give these guys credit, they are up front, they put this on paper--``We believe the Minimum Wage Law should be repealed.''

So there we go. People in America will now work for $3 or $4 an hour if that is what the circumstances require.

I point out, as I said earlier, this is coming from the Texas Republican Party Platform, and I could have gone elsewhere. But the ideas that come from them end up filtering among rightwing circles all over America.

Now, interestingly enough, at a time when the middle class is disappearing and the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well, it is important to hear what the CEOs of the largest Wall Street banks and corporations in this country--the Business Roundtable--have to say on the economy. Wall Street--bailed out by the middle class of this country--corporate America enjoying record- breaking profits.

Earlier this year, the Business Roundtable--again, these are the CEOs of the major corporations in America. Without exception, these guys are making millions of dollars a year in income. They have wonderful retirement packages, health care benefits for them and their families. This is what they have to say. They came to Washington, and they called on Congress to raise the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to the age of 70--70.

Wall Street billionaires, CEOs making huge amounts of money, with wonderful retirement packages--they now want Congress to raise the retirement age of Social Security and Medicare to age 70; they want to cut Social Security and veterans benefits, their COLAS; they want to raise taxes on working families and, obviously, it goes without saying, cut taxes for the largest corporations in America, at a time when one out of four of these corporations does not pay a nickel in taxes.

That is the background: the middle class collapsing; the rich getting richer. Then we have a right wing in this country, fueled by people like the Koch brothers, and others, who are pushing a totally reactionary agenda.

Let's talk about what that immediate agenda looks like in terms of the CR, the continuing resolution, that, in fact--and this is what is going to pass in the House, as I understand it--would lock in place sequestration for domestic programs, while providing a $20 billion boost to defense spending for the next 3 months. That is annualized, looking from the year's perspective.

If we do that for a year, that sequestration level, according to the Congressional Budget Office, sequestration will lead to the loss of 900,000 jobs and cause a seven-tenths of 1 percent drop in the GDP. Real unemployment today is close to 14 percent. With sequestration for a year, it would result in the loss of some 900,000 jobs--at exactly a time that we do not need it. Many of the jobs lost will be government jobs, but that should come as no surprise because the extreme right wing really does not believe in the concept of government.

So when we lose jobs in the teaching profession, when we lose police officers and firefighters and construction workers and VA nurses and VA doctors and scientists and engineers, that is no problem for some of these fellows.

Sequestration--we should be clear--has already caused enormous pain for millions of Americans. As I mentioned earlier, this country is way behind our global competitors in terms of childcare, early childhood education.

As a result of sequestration, more than 57,000 kids are losing access to Head Start and Early Head Start Programs.

At a time when food insecurity is skyrocketing, and when millions and millions of parents are wondering how they are going to be able to feed their kids, what the sequestration does is it literally goes after some of the most vulnerable people in this country, who are elderly people, low income, living on minimal Social Security benefits, who cannot even leave their homes. They are served right now by the Meals on Wheels Program, and I want to thank all of the Meals on Wheels volunteers out there for doing a great job trying to help these seniors. Sequestration will continue major cuts, throwing thousands and thousands of seniors off the Meals on Wheels Program.

We have a serious housing crisis in America. Sequestration will make it harder for over 100,000 families to get a variety of affordable housing programs.

Everybody knows the cost of a college education is soaring. Working- class families cannot afford college today. Yet sequestration would result in 70,000 college students losing Federal work-study grants. That is the means by which they earn some money to help stay in college.

Sequestration will result in cutting back on chemotherapy treatments to thousands of cancer patients because of a 2-percent cut to Medicare providers.

The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program--very important in the State of Vermont where it gets cold--massive cuts.

Long-term unemployment checks--unemployment remains high--a 10- percent cut. That will be continued.

So that is where we are right now.

And it gets worse. It gets worse. If the Boehner CR is approved, programs that millions of Americans rely on will be cut even further. So everything I told you will get even worse.

I think what we are looking at right now is not just the immediate pain of the continuing resolution or the threat not to pay our debts and destroy the credit rating of the United States of America. Those are enormous realities. But what we are looking at is a real effort to dismember the U.S. Government and wreak havoc on the lives of tens and tens and tens of millions of people.

To my mind, what we have to do is exactly the opposite of what our rightwing friends are suggesting. They are suggesting that we should raise unemployment. They are suggesting that we should cut back on Federal funding for infrastructure. I believe we should be investing billions and billions of dollars in addressing our crumbling infrastructure--roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants, our rail system. When we do that, we make this country more productive and we create millions of jobs. I believe we have to invest significantly in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. When we do that, we not only protect the environment and combat global warming, but we also create jobs. I believe we have to rewrite our disastrous trade policies so that American jobs are not our No. 1 export. I believe, instead of further deregulation of Wall Street, Wall Street has to be effectively regulated so their greed and recklessness can no longer cause enormous problems for our economy. Instead of lowering taxes for the wealthiest people, I think it is high time they started paying their fair share of taxes.

So what we are involved in here is a great debate, which goes beyond the continuing resolution. It goes beyond the shutdown of the government. It goes beyond whether the United States fails to pay its bills for the first time in history. I believe what we have is an ideology, a rightwing ideology which reflects, at most, the views of 15 percent of the American people. I think that is probably a generous perspective. I think the vast majority of the American people do not believe what rightwing extremism is doing, and it is high time we begin to stand and say to these people: If you are going to continue those efforts, you may not be back here in the U.S. Congress.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, 5 years ago, as a result of the greed and the recklessness and the illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a result, millions of people lost their homes, lost their jobs, and lost their life savings. And about 5 years ago we were looking at a situation where some 700,000 Americans a month were losing their jobs--an unbelievable number. The stock market plummeted. There was panic in the financial sector.

The good news is that to a significant degree we have stabilized that situation. We are not losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. The stock market is, in fact, doing very well. But what is important to understand is that it is imperative we not accept the ``new normal'' for the economy as it is today because the reality is that today, while the situation is better than it was 5 years ago, for the middle class and for the working families of this country the economy is still in very bad shape. And I am not just talking about a 5-year period; I am talking about a generational situation.

Mr. President, you may have seen that just yesterday the Census Bureau came out with some new and extremely disturbing statistics, and it tells us why so many Americans are frustrated and angry with what is going on in Washington and why so many people respond to pollsters and say: Yes, we believe the country is going in the wrong direction.

What they are saying is true. They have every reason to be angry, every reason be frustrated. Of course, economically this country is moving, in a very significant way, in the wrong direction.

This is what the Census Bureau reported yesterday: They said the typical middle-class family, the family right in the middle of American society, that median family income today is less than it was 24 years ago. Median family income today for that typical American family is less than it was 24 years ago.

In 2002, typical middle-class families, that family right in the middle, made $51,017. Back in 1989, that family made $51,681. What does that mean? It means that 24 years later, after all of the effort and the hard work of people, today they are worse off than they were 24 years ago.

Let's think about what that means. It means that despite the explosion of technology and all of the robotics, all of the cell phones and everything else that has made this economy more productive, the median family income today is worse than it was 24 years ago.

I will give you an example of what that means. If during the period from 1989 through 2012 that typical American family had received just a 2-percent increase in their income--just 2 percent, a very modest increase--that family today, instead of making $51,000 a year, would be making $81,000 a year. That is a $30,000 gap.

If over that 24-year period people had seen a modest--I am not taking about a huge increase--a modest increase in their income of 2 percent, which people certainly deserve, that family would make $81,000 a year. Today that family is making $51,000 a year--less than that family was making 24 years ago.

This is what the Census Bureau also reported. They said the typical middle-class family has seen its income go down by more than $5,000 since 1999, after adjusting for inflation--$5,000.

They told us the average male worker made $283 less last year than that same worker made 44 years ago. Do you want to know why people are angry? They see an explosion of technology, they see an explosion of productivity, and yet a male worker today is making less than a male worker--the average male worker--made 44 years ago.

The average female worker earned $1,775 less than they did in 2007. A recordbreaking 46.5 million Americans lived in poverty last year. That is more people living in poverty than at any time in American history. Sixteen million children live in poverty. That is almost 22 percent of all kids in America. That is the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. That is the future of America. Over one out of five kids in the country is living in poverty.

A higher percentage of African Americans lived in poverty last year than was the case 15 years ago, and 9.1 percent of seniors lived in poverty last year, higher than in 2009. More American seniors were living in poverty last year than in 1972. Today, 48 million Americans are uninsured, no health insurance. That will change as a result of ObamaCare. But as of today, 48 million Americans are uninsured, 3 million more than in 2008.

So when people call the Presiding Officer's office in Delaware or my office in Vermont and they say: You know what: we are hurting, they are telling the truth. What they are saying is Congress seems to deal with everything except the reality facing the middle class and working families of this country.

People worry desperately not only for themselves, they worry more for their kids. What kind of education will their kids have? Will there be enough teachers in the classroom? Will their kids be able to afford to go to college or will young working families be able to find quality, affordable child care? What kind of job will their kids have when they get out of high school or they get out of college?

Those are the questions that tens of millions of Americans are asking all over this country. Here in Washington, we are not giving them clear and straightforward answers. What makes this moment in American history unique is that while the great American middle class is disappearing and while the number of Americans living in poverty is at an alltime high, something else is going on in this society; that is, that the people on top, the top 1 percent, have never, ever had it so good. Last week we learned an astounding fact I want everybody to hear clearly; that is, between 2009 and 2012, the last years we have information on, 95 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent--95 percent of all of the new income created in America went to the top 1 percent.

The bottom 99 percent shared in 4 percent of the new income. So what we are seeing as a nation is the disappearance of the middle class, millions of families leaving the middle class and descending into poverty, struggling desperately to feed their families, to put gas in their car, to get to work, to survive on an $8-an-hour wage.

You have that reality over here, and then you have another reality; that is, the people on top are doing better than at any time since before the Great Depression.

Today, the top 1 percent own 38 percent of the Nation's financial wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 60 percent, the majority of the American people together, own only 2.3 percent of the wealth in this country. When I was in school we used to--and I am sure all over this country-- study what we called an oligarchy. An oligarchy is a nation in which a handful of very wealthy people control the economy, control the politics of the nation. It does not matter about political parties because they own those parties as well.

Guess what. What we used to look at in Latin America and laugh about or worry about has now come home to

this country. In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider.

I do not believe the American people feel that is what this great country should be about; that the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns barely 2 percent of the wealth. That is not the dream of what this great country is about.

Earlier this week Forbes magazine reported that the wealthiest 400 Americans in this country--400 people--are now worth a recordbreaking $2 trillion--400 people worth $2 trillion; in other words, the concentration of wealth is getting greater and greater and greater. The wealthiest 400 Americans now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans, over 150 million Americans.

We could probably squeeze 400 people into this room. If we did and they were the wealthiest people in this country, 400 people in this room would own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the American people.

Just one family, one family in America, the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are worth over $100 billion and own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

While the middle class disappears, while children in this country go hungry, while veterans sleep out on the streets, corporate profits are now at an alltime high, while wages, as a share of the economy, are at a record low.

Wall Street--the major financial institutions in this country whose greed and recklessness drove us into this economic downturn and the group of people the American middle class bailed out 5 years ago--is now doing phenomenally well. So Wall Street drives the country into a severe economic downturn. Wall Street is bailed out by the American middle class. Wall Street now is doing phenomenally well while the middle class is disappearing.

You want to know why the American people are angry and disgusted and frustrated? That is why. In fact, the CEOs on Wall Street, the executives there, are on track to make more money this year than they did in 2009. That is the time in which Wall Street greed destroyed our economy.

The American middle class is disappearing. Poverty is increasing. The gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider. That is the economic reality facing this country. The time is long overdue for this Congress and this President to start, in a very forceful, aggressive way, to address that issue.

But where are we today? Are we having a major debate on the floor of the Senate as to how we are going to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs? I do not hear that debate. Are we having a debate on the floor of the Senate that says it is an outrage that working people throughout the country are trying to survive on a minimum wage of $7.25 and we need to raise that substantially so that when people work 40 hours a week they can actually take care of themselves and their families and not go deeper into debt? Are we having that debate? I do not hear that.

Are we having a debate which says that not only should we not cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but we should join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all of our people as a right of citizenship? I do not hear that debate; quite the contrary, this is the debate I hear. This is what I am hearing from my colleagues over in the House and the Republican leadership over there. What I am hearing them say is that while poverty is at an alltime high, while our childcare system, early childhood education is a disaster, what they want to do is continue sequestration and push for more across-the-board spending cuts to Head Start, while elderly people throughout the country who are fragile and hurting are dependent on the Meals On Wheels Program, they want to continue cuts in that program.

They want to continue cuts in that program. While millions of families are wondering how they are going to send kids to college, they want to continue sequestration, making it harder for families to send their kids to college. They want to continue cuts to unemployment insurance and a number of other vital programs; in other words, instead of addressing the very serious problems facing the middle class and the working class of this country, what I am hearing from my Republican colleagues is let's make a bad situation even worse.

Let me conclude by saying, instead of cutting the Head Start Program, we should be expanding the Head Start Program. Study after study makes it clear that the most important years of a human being's life are 0 to 3. Giving those little kids the intellectual and emotional nourishment they need so they will do well in school is perhaps the most important work we can do.

We have to increase funding for Head Start, not cut funding for Head Start.

It is a moral outrage in this country that anybody here talks about cutting back on the Meals On Wheels Program, which provides at least one nutritious meal per day to fragile and vulnerable citizens. We should not be cutting back on that program; we should be significantly expanding that program.

I can tell you that in Vermont, if you talk to the people in my State, they will tell you we have significant problems with our bridges, significant problems with our roads, significant problems with rail, significant problems with wastewater and water plants. People want to invest in our crumbling infrastructure and make us a productive nation. When we do that, we can create jobs.

Right now on the floor--I don't know if we are going to get to vote on it--there is a very modest bill brought forth by Senators Shaheen and Portman which talks about energy efficiency. In Vermont and throughout this country, people are paying higher fuel bills than they should, wasting enormous amounts of energy, and contributing to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions because we are not aggressive on energy efficiency, making our homes more efficient. We should be investing in energy efficiency and creating jobs doing this.

The bottom line is we are in a pivotal moment in American history. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is disappearing, and poverty is at an alltime high. People are demanding that we create jobs and address the problems facing this country. Yet we have folks who want to make a bad situation worse by protecting the tax breaks that have been given to the wealthy and large corporations and then cut back on the needs of ordinary Americans.

I hope the American people will stand and say enough is enough and that they will demand that, finally, Congress stands with the middle class of this country.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I wanted to use this opportunity to say a few words about the issue that is on everybody's minds; that is, Syria. I want to tell you that approximately 95 percent of the thousands of e-mails and phone calls my office has received are against U.S. military intervention in the bloody and chaotic civil war in Syria.

The truth is the numbers in Vermont may be higher than the national average in terms of opposition to this war. But there is probably no State in this country where U.S. military intervention in this bloody and complicated civil war in Syria is being supported. It is an interesting phenomenon.

We have a very divided Nation politically, but on this issue it appears the vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the vast majority of progressives--I am a progressive--conservatives, moderates, have all come together to express deep concern about the United States being involved in the third military intervention in the Middle East in 12 years.

Let me tell you why I believe the American people feel so strongly against military involvement in Syria. Clearly, it has much to do with the fact that the United States has already been at war for 12 years. There are kids in this country who are halfway through primary school who have never known an America that has not been at war.

What the American people also understand is these wars have been enormously costly in many ways. Not only have these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost us the lives of some 4,600 brave American men and women who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as chairman of the Veterans Affairs' Committee I can tell you that today we have tens of thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who are dealing with traumatic brain injury, who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, problems they are going to be carrying with them for the rest of their lives.

The human cost of those wars has been enormous. But it is not only the human cost, it is the financial cost as well. Today, at a time when working families are struggling to keep their heads above water economically, we are throwing thousands and thousands of little kids who desperately need preschool education off of Head Start. We should be expanding Head Start. But because of sequestration we are throwing them off of Head Start. We are denying nutrition programs, the Meals on Wheels Programs, that go to some of the most vulnerable and fragile seniors in this country. We are throwing them off basic nutrition programs.

We are forcing massive cuts through furloughs on tens of thousands of Federal employees, including members of the Vermont National Guard. At the end of the day, by the time we take care of the last servicemember who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars will have cost us at least $3 trillion.

But it is not only the human cost of those wars that troubles the American people. It is not only the financial cost of these wars that troubles the American people. It is the deep sense that exists across the political spectrum that foreign policy and going to war are a lot more complicated and unpredictable and have unintended consequences, far more so than many of our leaders in past years have believed.

Afghanistan is a small country that in 2001 virtually had no army when the United States invaded it; no army against the most powerful military force in the history of the world.

What is the problem? Twelve years later we are still in Afghanistan. All of us remember President George W. Bush standing on an aircraft carrier telling us that in Iraq the mission was accomplished. Mission accomplished.

Well, it didn't turn out quite that way. Thousands of deaths later for

American servicemembers, tens of thousands of deaths later for the people of Iraq, peace and democracy in that country has not yet been accomplished. It is a lot more complicated than people thought it would be.

Today people worry what are the long-term implications and what are the unforeseen consequences of the United States being involved in a horrendous, bloody, and complicated war in Syria. All of us know Asad is a ruthless dictator who has exploited his people terribly and used chemical weapons against them. But not every American knows that some 20 to 25 percent of the opposition to Asad turns out to be Islamic fundamentalists, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda.

What are the long-term implications and unintended consequences of being involved in a war in that area? I know the President has been very clear about saying he is talking about strikes that are very targeted, very minimal. But once you break the egg, once you get involved, we have to bear and will bear a certain amount of responsibility for what happens during the war and even after the war if Asad is overthrown.

This is why the American people are extremely concerned about the United States unilaterally going into Syria without the support of the international community and without the support of the United Nations.

Having said all of that, in my mind there is another reason, a deeper reason, as to why there is so much opposition to the President's proposal and the proposal that came out of the Foreign Relations Committee, which was more open-ended and spoke about regime change. That has everything to do with the fact that the favorability rating of the Congress is today somewhere between 8 and 15 percent.

The vast majority of the American people don't know. They don't care who controls the Senate, whether it is the Democrats. They don't know who controls the House, the Republicans. By and large, the American people have given up believing that the Congress and the White House are listening to their needs, which are very serious at this moment, or are interested or capable of responding to their needs.

What the American people are saying, and they are saying it very loudly, is we have a Congress and a White House which continues to ignore the enormous crises facing the middle class and working families of our country. What they are saying is: Yes, Mr. President, we agree with you, what Asad is doing in Syria is unspeakable; that he is gassing his own kids is beyond belief. We understand that. We want the international community to address that.

But what they are also saying is: Mr. President, Members of Congress, think about our children, the kids in West Virginia, the kids in California, the kids in Detroit, the kids in Vermont. What about our kids? What kind of future are they going to have in an economy in which the middle class continues to disappear and poverty remains at an almost all-time high for the last 60 years?

Today real unemployment in this country is not 7.4 percent, the official unemployment rate. Real unemployment is close to 14 percent.

Youth unemployment is a tragedy. Kids are graduating high school, going out and looking for jobs, and they want to get a sense of independence. There are no jobs for them. Youth unemployment in this country is close to 20 percent.

For minorities, the number is considerably higher. Black youth unemployment in this country is close to 40 percent. Parents are worried that their kids are graduating from high school and there are no jobs available to them.

Before I came to Washington the other day, I talked to a physician in the State of Vermont who said: Bernie, do you know what. In Vermont, beautiful Vermont, rural Vermont, we are facing a heroin epidemic. Kids are shooting up heroin in Vermont, not to mention the rest of the country, because they don't see much of a future facing them.

Parents are worried that their kids are graduating college, often deeply in debt, and that either they can't find a job or the jobs they do obtain often do not require a college degree. The fact is most of the new jobs being created in this country are part-time jobs with minimal benefits, and they are often low-wage jobs.

What the Department of Labor is telling us is that, in fact, most of the new jobs we see coming down the pike for our kids do not require a college degree. They are low-wage jobs.

The people are saying from one end of this country, yes, we are concerned about Syria, but we are also concerned about Los Angeles, Detroit, and St. Johnsbury, VT. Please, Mr. President, create jobs for the working families of this country. What they are begging the Congress to do is to address the needs our people face.

What they understand, and I think this has a lot to do with why there is so much opposition to getting involved in this war in Syria, is that the Congress has virtually done nothing to improve the economy for working families, and they worry very much that if all of our time, energy, and resources are devoted to Syria, we are never going to address the serious problems facing the working families of this country.

Tens of millions of our fellow Americans today are working longer hours for lower wages, and many of them are earning wages that are simply too low to support a family. We have been happy to hear in Michigan, for example, the automobile industry is doing better; more people are being hired. That is the good news.

Do you know what the bad news is. The new jobs in the automobile industry are barely more than 50 percent in pay of what the old jobs were. All over this country the new jobs that are being created are not paying what the jobs in this country used to pay. We have millions of people working for a disgracefully low minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

People are saying: Mr. President, Members of Congress, yes, we are worried about Syria, but why don't you work to make sure every person who has a job in this country can earn a wage which enables him or her to take care of their family?

The media doesn't pay a lot of attention to it, Congress doesn't pay a lot of attention, but the American people also understand it is not only high unemployment and low wages, something else is going on in this country. They know that while the middle class is disappearing and 46 million Americans are living in poverty, they understand the people on top today, the people whose lobbyists surround this institution, the people who make huge campaign contributions to the political parties, are doing very well. They are doing extraordinarily well. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. The people on Wall Street, whose greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, well, guess what. They are doing phenomenally well. They are making record-breaking profits. The rich are doing well and corporate America is doing well. They are making all kinds of campaign contributions.

The American people are looking around and saying, What are you doing for us? What are you doing to protect the seniors and their Social Security? What are you doing to protect the children of this country, to make sure they get a decent education? What are you doing to make sure the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world so all of our people have health care as a right?

One of the reasons I think there is so much lack of support for this war is the American people feel it is high time for us to pay attention to their needs.

We have recently heard, and the news is being updated almost momentarily, that Russia, for whatever reasons, has decided finally to play a positive role in this crisis. They are urging Syria to allow the international community to take possession of their chemical weapons. We believe that France right now is prepared to go to the Security Council with a resolution similar to what the Russians are talking about.

I can't tell you how honest the Russians are being in this effort, what their ulterior plans may be. But I think now is the opportunity to work with Russia, to work with China, to work with the Security Council and the United Nations. It would be an extraordinary victory, in my view, for the people of Syria, who are going through horror after horror right now,

for the entire world, and for the future of the world, if we could take those terrible chemical weapons out of Asad's hands and destroy them. I would hope very much the President and our Secretary of State will be working with the international community to make that happen.

Let me conclude. I think we are in a very interesting and, in fact, momentous moment in the history of the United States of America. The people are coming together to say we have enormous crises in our own country and if we don't get our act together, we are going to see the decline of a once-great Nation. We are going to see, for the first time in the modern history of our country, our children having a lower standard of living than we do.

I would hope the lesson we learned of this entire episode is the American people do not want us unilaterally getting involved in another war in the Middle East. I would hope also the lesson we learned is the American people are saying very loudly and clearly this country faces enormous crises: economically, global warming, health care, education, income and wealth inequality, and they want us to start addressing those needs. I hope that out of this very difficult moment the silver lining is we learn something from what the American people want and we begin to do what they say.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin.) The clerk will call the roll.