Floor Statements

Madam President, Federal emergency unemployment benefits are going to expire on December 28 unless we do something to stop it.

Right now, there are 11 million Americans out of work through no fault of their own.

They are trying to find work, and they rely on unemployment insurance to help them keep food on the table and keep a roof over their heads and their families' heads, while they search for a new job.

And now, over 1 million people who are trying to find work stand to lose their unemployment insurance on December 28 because Congress has not acted.

Let me repeat that: Just 3 days after Christmas, 1 million people will lose a critical source of income while they look for work because of us.

Letting Federal unemployment insurance expire would be devastating for families all across the country.

I have heard from many of my constituents in Michigan on just how bad this will be, and how it will affect their families.

There are stories throughout Michigan and across our country.

It is astounding that Congress would even consider letting this expire, given that unemployment rates in many States are higher today than they were in 2008 when we passed this law.

In June of 2008, when the President signed this law, the national unemployment rate was under 6 percent. Today, it is 7 percent.

Even though we are seeing a number of great things happening in Michigan, we are still struggling to create enough jobs for everyone who needs one.

And because of that, Michigan just moved back into a position where, as a State with a high percentage of people out of work, Federal emergency unemployment benefits have been extended to 36 weeks.

This means that people in Michigan who are trying to find a job get a few more weeks to find something before they lose this critical lifeline.

But not if we let it expire.

The story is the same in many States across the country.

Today, 46 out of the 50 states, including Michigan, have higher unemployment rates than they did when this law went into effect.

While we are seeing some positive signs in the economic numbers, there are still almost 11 million Americans out of work.

That is far too many. There are three people who are looking for work for every 1 job available.

And if we don't act, if we don't extend this critical lifeline, then over 43,000 people in Michigan--and over 1 million longterm unemployed people across the country--will face an uncertain future.

We are six days from Christmas; six days from our children waking up and running to the Christmas tree to see what Santa brought them.

And the question facing thousands of families in Michigan--facing Regina in Holland and Stephen in Dearborn--and over a million men and women across the country, is: Will there be anything under the tree on Christmas morning?

Will there be a house to sleep in on Christmas Eve?

Will there be food on the table tonight, or tomorrow night, or on Christmas night?

These are people who are out of work through no fault of their own.

People who have lost their jobs are already on the ropes.

They have already seen cuts to unemployment insurance that have made it harder to make ends meet.

And now Congress is threatening to pull the rug out from under them.

These are people who want to work, who are trying to work, and just need help getting by while they find a new job. Giving them the benefits they earned isn't a ``disservice''--it is a lifeline.

This is what little money families have to get by--and they spend it at the grocery store and to pay their bills.

Without this help, they could lose their homes to foreclosure.

At such a critical time in our economic recovery, we cannot afford another wave of foreclosures.

It is also important to note that this is unemployment insurance-- people earned it by working, and in order to qualify for this assistance, you must be actively looking for a job every week.

Letting the Federal emergency unemployment benefits expire would hurt these families and would send a ripple effect through the economy.

Congress should be helping to create jobs, not pulling the rug out from under people looking for jobs.

There is no reason for this to happen. We can pass a bill to extend this critical help.

In the past, both parties have always worked together to continue emergency unemployment insurance when the economy is struggling.

This is not the time to pull the rug out from people looking for work.

I urge my colleagues to come together in a bipartisan way to extend unemployment insurance so our families--and the economy--do not suffer.

Again, I thank Senator Reed who has been such a champion on this issue. I have been proud to partner with him on behalf of over a million people who are trying to find work and will lose their unemployment benefits three days after Christmas, on December 28. I can't think of anything more devastating to families trying to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

I also thank Senator Baucus for his leadership on this issue and congratulate him on his new opportunity for the future.

Specifically, let me read letters that I think tell it all from people in Michigan.

Regina from Holland writes:

I am begging you to extend unemployment insurance. I have

been unemployed since June. I am almost done with my first

tier of unemployment. I have been trying to find work. I am

59 years old, and that does not help in finding a job.

Madam President, let me say we have way too many women--we have way too many people who are in their 50s and in their 60s trying to find work and having a very difficult time for a number of reasons.

She goes on to say:

If you don't pass extensions, my family will only have my

husband's Social Security check coming in, and we'll lose our

home. I am really scared we will not have this money coming

in after December 28th, and I don't know what we will do.

I also heard from Stephen in Dearborn who wrote me and said:

This December 28 deadline directly affects me and my

family. I have been unemployed for 6 months. I have been

struggling to keep things afloat for my wife and my two young

children.

If these benefits cease at the end of the month, it will

put us even closer to losing everything my wife and I have

worked very hard for.

The reality is, even though the economy is getting better, we still have three people looking for every one job that is available. At one time it was five people, so we have made some progress. But the truth is we still have a situation where way too many people in Michigan and across the country--in fact, almost 11 million people are out of work, and we have three people fighting for every one job that is available.

We also still have challenges as it relates to matching up the jobs with the skills that people have. Not that people don't have skills, but they are different than the jobs that are available. People going back to school, they want to work. We all want the dignity of financial independence and work. But too many people are struggling in an economy they did not create, a global economy they did not create.

If we do not act--if we do not support Senator Reed's motion--over 43,000 people in Michigan, over 1 million long-term unemployed people across the country will find themselves in a devastating situation right after Christmas. It makes no sense. I urge my colleagues to join together and do what we have done with Republican Presidents, Democratic Presidents, what we have done on a bipartisan basis over the years; and that is to make sure we have a lifeline for people who are needing temporary help while they look for work.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I would like to join several of my colleagues who have already spoken to clarify the intent of an important provision in the Bipartisan Budget Act that the Senate is currently considering.

Section 203 of the legislation is intended to prevent criminals from using information in the Death Master File, DMF--a list of recently deceased individuals that includes personal information such as Social Security numbers--to steal their identities to commit fraud.

At the same time, the provision is intended to allow those who must use the DMF for legitimate business or official purposes, such as paying life insurance proceeds, preventing fraud, and addressing unclaimed property, to continue to have access to the information they need.

Under this provision, the Secretary of Commerce is required to establish a program that will restrict public access to an individual's personal information on the DMF for a 3-year period after his or her death. The Secretary will also determine individuals certified under the program who will maintain access to the Death Master File for legitimate business or fraud prevention interests. These include State authorities, life insurance companies, and other legitimate users.

To strike this balance between stopping criminals and allowing legitimate users to perform their responsibilities, the provision intends for the Department of Commerce to follow rulemaking procedures allowing for sufficient notice and comment from the public and interested parties. The provision is also intended to allow legitimate current users of the Death Master File to continue accessing DMF information until the certification program is established.

I understand that Senator Nelson, the original author of this provision, engaged in a colloquy with Chairman Murray and Senator Casey, clarifying its intent. I salute Senator Nelson for his leadership in crafting a strong and well-targeted response to the important issue of identity theft.

Madam President, I wish to enter into a colloquy with my great friend from Missouri, Senator Blunt.

I wish to make a comment, if my colleague will excuse me. I have to say I am amazed to hear that we are court packing when what we are talking about is trying to fill three vacancies on a court. I hadn't heard that before with other Presidents. Hopefully, we can fill vacancies and try to do it in a bipartisan way.

Madam President, I very much wish to thank a great friend and colleague, Senator Blunt, for joining me today on the floor and in leadership on some very important community mental health legislation.

We have an opportunity to get something done with this issue.

I ask unanimous consent to proceed with the colloquy.

We wish to do this today because today marks the 50th anniversary to the day that President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act. The good news is he signed this act. The unfortunate news is it was the last act he signed in his life.

Today we want to recognize what that has meant to so many people across the country. This put in place the ability to serve people in the community who have mental health issues, rather than only being in institutions, being able to serve people closer to home, at home or to be able to give them the opportunity to get the help they need and still be active and successful in the community.

I think so many of us have been touched by mental health issues, which is part of physical--it is not mental and physical health. I think it is about time. I know my friend would agree that we start treating illnesses above

the neck differently than illnesses below the neck. It is all about comprehensive health care. We have all been touched in some way.

My father went undiagnosed with a bipolar disorder for 10 years when I was growing up. When he finally received the help he needed, the medication he needed, he was able to work and be successful for the rest of his life. I wish to make sure every family has that opportunity.

I know for President Kennedy it was his younger sister Rosemary who was institutionalized in the early 1940s and that brought him to this issue as well as to other passionate concerns that he had. President Kennedy saw a way to improve the lives of people such as his sister living with a mental illness by providing service in the community and, frankly, lowering the stigma on mental health. We still have a long way to go on reducing the stigma and understanding that it is, in most occasions, a physiological change in the brain, a chemical imbalance, something that needs to be treated appropriately, and that is certainly not a choice by an individual.

President Kennedy thought we needed to make sure we were providing the very best for the people in this community. In his statement to Congress he wrote:

We need a new type of health facility, one which will

return mental health care to the mainstream of American

medicine, and at the same time, upgrade mental health

services.

We have worked together in a bipartisan way since then. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act was championed by our friends and colleagues, Senators Pete Domenici, Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy, and Congressman Patrick Kennedy in the House, and it became law. It said we have to have parity in how insurance companies treat mental health and physical health.

I was pleased to get those provisions into health reform, but there is more to do and that is why we are here.

I wish to turn to my friend from Missouri, who has been a great partner and ask, as we go forward, what his thoughts are on this day and what we should continue to do to continue with this legacy.

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

I wish to go back to what the Senator from Missouri has indicated. Our veterans are coming home. We know that at least 200,000 of our veterans coming home will go into the community.

I see our distinguished chair of the Senate veterans' committee on the floor. I thank the Senator for all of his good work.

In addition to the VA system, where we are strengthening mental health services, we know that many will come home to the communities and be looking to an outpatient clinic or somewhere in the community for help. The reason we have strong support from the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' organizations is because our Excellence in Mental Health Act legislation, which creates a behavioral health clinic model based on what has been done in community health that has worked so well, will create an opportunity for those veterans coming home to get support and help in the community.

One of the most difficult statistics to talk about is that 22 of our veterans are committing suicide every day--22 every day. That is unacceptable.

We need to make sure families and veterans have the support that they need so that when they come home they can receive the help they need. I am very proud of the fact we have about 50 organizations supporting the Excellence in Mental Health Act, such as sheriffs and police officers. Most likely, if somebody needs help, they are placed in a jail or in the emergency room. They don't go to a mental health facility.

What we are proposing is something that would provide 24-hour emergency psychiatric delivery, coupled with high quality community mental health services. The time is now to do this.

We have seen the need increase as states over the years have cut funding for in-patient mental health services and have not replaced them with services in the community.

Too often, people who need mental health treatment end up not getting the treatment they need, and end up in the emergency room or, worse, in jail. The ER and jail are not the place to treat mental illness.

It is fair to say that our need now is greater than ever.

Too many people who need treatment don't get it, including one-third of all people living with mood disorders and more than half of those with severe mental disorders.

Tragically, 22 American veterans commit suicide every day. At least 25 percent of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are in need of some form of mental health treatment.

We know that people suffering from mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

However, we have seen too many examples of what happens when people don't get the treatment they need around the country and right here in Washington, DC, where we've seen two tragic examples in the past 2 months, including the shootings at the Navy Yard and the woman who tried to drive her car into the White House and the Capitol.

What can we do to improve the way we treat mental health issues in this country? How can we improve people's lives?

We need to take the final step in mental health parity by strengthening access to quality mental health services in communities across America. That is why we need to pass the Excellence in Mental Health Act that the Senator from Missouri and I have sponsored together.

This bill would expand access to community mental health care by making sure more providers are available to treat mental health issues and can offer a broad range of mental health services, such as the 24- hour crisis psychiatric services, integrated preventive screenings, integrated treatment for mental illness and substance abuse, and expanded peer support and counseling services for patients and families.

This bill can help fulfill the legacy of President Kennedy's Community Mental Health Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.

There will be health care legislation coming to the floor before the end of this year to address physician payments, and that would be a natural place to address the Excellence in Mental Health Act.

I hope our colleagues will join us in supporting critical efforts to address mental health care in this country, and I hope they will join us in moving this proposal forward so we can get closer to this goal.

I wish to turn to my colleague, the distinguished Senator from Missouri for closing remarks. He has been a true champion for mental health and a wonderful partner to me and for his views on how we can work together to improve mental health treatment in America.

Madam President, I again thank my friend from Missouri for his commitment and for working with so many colleagues across the aisle on a bipartisan basis. I believe we will get this done and we will now, on this 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's signing the Community Mental Health Act, complete the circle in terms of mental health parity in our country.

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

Mr. President, there are two issues wrapped together right now that are causing dire consequences for people all across the country. The first, as we know and as we have been debating, is the government shutdown and all that has happened in terms of people being hurt, jobs being lost, small businesses not being able to get the loans they need, people not being able to complete their mortgage requirements to get the homes they want, the concerns about health and safety and all of the other issues, children, what is happening to so many people, senior citizens, veterans, and so on--very, very serious.

This is the 11th day of the government shutdown that is costing us jobs, slowing the economy, and hurting families all across the country. It is an absolute drag on the economy, on our markets and on, frankly, America's standing in the world, which we should all be concerned about right now.

It is, frankly, an embarrassment that in the greatest, wealthiest country in the world our government is shut down while a small minority tries to score political points. Unfortunately, that is what has been happening.

The second issue is also very important; that is, the lapse of a farm bill, the agriculture and food policy bill in this country. The farm bill has been actually expired for 376 days--376 days--because it ended on September 30 of 2012.

Last January there was a partial extension that extended subsidies that we all said should be eliminated as it did not include reforms and did not include deficit reduction, but there was a partial extension until September 30 and that has also lapsed.

I know the distinguished Presiding Officer from Indiana, who is a member of my committee, fights very hard for Indiana. I am grateful he is a member of our committee. I know the Senator understands and shares my tremendous concern and urgency, both about the government shutdown and that we are seeing agricultural programs and rural economic development shut down because we don't have a farm bill.

Nowhere is this felt more strongly now than in South Dakota. The Presiding Officer and I are not from South Dakota, but we have colleagues in the Senate who have been speaking on the floor. I have talked to the Senators from South Dakota who are deeply concerned, as well as the Senators from North Dakota.

In South Dakota last Friday, October 4, an early autumn blizzard killed an estimated 75,000 head of cattle. This is one of the many pictures of what is happening as a result of this blizzard. Many producers lost half of their entire herd. Keep in mind that many thousands of these cows would have produced calves in the spring. These losses are huge for ranchers and families and will be felt for many years to come. These cattle ranchers and their families have no safety net, zero safety net. They don't receive direct payment subsidies. They now have zero safety net. They only had livestock disaster plans which expired on October 1, 2011, 741 days ago. Their losses are expected to reach into the tens of millions of dollars.

Our Senate farm bill, which we passed with strong bipartisan majorities last year and this year--we have actually done it twice-- includes permanent livestock disaster assistance for these ranchers' families to make sure ranchers, such as those in South Dakota, don't go bankrupt, which is what is going to happen if we don't get this farm bill in place as soon as possible.

But there is no farm bill. Even if there were, those farmers wouldn't be able to get help because the farmers can't document their losses or get the answers they need from the Farm Service Agency offices because they are closed due to the shutdown.

These ranchers, such as many other ranchers across the country, are getting a one-two punch by not being able to go to their local FSA office to get the help they need, while at the same time not having the long-term certainty of agricultural policy and a safety net when there is a catastrophe.

Three things have come together to make this a major disaster for ranchers, such as the need for a farm bill with livestock disaster assistance, which we have. We have a great livestock disaster assistance program in our bill.

The good news is the House has one as well. If we can get a farm bill done, which could be done any day--we are willing to be a part of any agreement anyone does--and we will be able to help those South Dakota ranchers. Of the three items, one is that we don't yet have the final farm bill, even though the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, has done its job twice.

Secondly, we have a government shutdown that is not allowing these ranchers to get the help they need.

Thirdly, we have a blizzard.

Two out of three of these are self-inflicted. Think about it. Because there is no farm bill, because there is a government shutdown, somewhere ranchers are going to lose everything--their homes, their land, everything--because

of the freak blizzard in early October. We can debate the larger issues around that as well.

The irony is those ranchers in South Dakota have 3 days under the law to dispose of their dead cattle. They were just hit by blizzard, suffered unbelievable losses, and they have 3 days to clean it up. They don't get an extension. They can't kick the can down the road. They can't wait forever either. They can't wait any longer for us to get a farm bill done. This needs to be done right now. If there is the political will to do it and there is support from the Speaker to do it, we can get this done quickly.

Those cattle ranchers aren't alone. Producers in the Midwest, the Northwest, the West, and much of the South went through one of the worst droughts in a generation last summer. Many producers sold off most of their herds because there wasn't the grass for the cattle to graze on. Feed was scarce and expensive. As a result, cattle inventories dropped to their lowest levels in five decades, 50 years. For all of us who enjoy eating meat, we are seeing the consequences of the lowest level in five decades. Farmers all across the country suffered from this drought. In addition, fruit growers from my State suffered heavy losses last year from an early spring followed by a late frost, and our cherry growers were some of the hardest hit. In fact, they were virtually wiped out. Their crop was wiped out last year. They also don't have a safety net. Similar to ranchers, they aren't eligible for direct payment subsidies and they weren't able to get any crop insurance either.

We worked hard in this farm bill to make sure there were risk management tools, not only subsidies because a farmer grows something. As taxpayers, we can't afford to do that. It is not the right thing to do. We have a deficit we have to address, and it makes no sense. We work hard to make sure the risk management tools are available to help farmers and ranchers manage their risk when there is a disaster such as South Dakota, but there is no help until we get the farm bill signed into law.

For all the men and women, all the families--and the vast majority we are talking about are middle-class families--small farmers, medium- sized farmers who are working hard from sunrise to sunset, day-in and day-out with the riskiest business in the world, they can't kick the can down the road. When the crop is ready to be harvested, they have to do it.

They are looking at us and saying: Get the job done. Get the farm bill done now.

All of those middle-class families and 16 million people in this country have jobs because of agriculture. They are saying we have waited long enough. How many disasters have to happen without the right tools before this gets done? With 16 million people, the biggest bill we are going to pass this year is the farm bill. This is for rural economic development, energy, food-related industries, conservation efforts, our help for people who are caught up in their own personal economic disasters, which is so critical, and they are all counting on us.

The men and women who are working hard to bring in the harvest are counting on us to get this done. We did a farm bill. I am grateful to leaders on both sides of the aisle who came together. That is how I know we can stop this shutdown and pay our bills because we have done things together in the Senate. We need our colleagues in the House to be willing to step in and do the same.

People have waited long enough. It is time to get it done, and it is time to get it done now.

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

Mr. President, we are hearing a lot of discussion right now about the role of government and the role of the public sector.

We know there is a minority in the House of Representatives who ran on shutting the government down and think they have achieved something as we see the economy teetering now, as we see people who have been put out of work, who have mortgages, car payments, and concerns about their children and so on, and all the services that are in jeopardy, from food safety to law enforcement to what happens in the case of an oil spill and all of the things in between.

I found it interesting with our colleagues who have embraced the idea that in the greatest country in the world and in the greatest democracy in the world there is no need for the public sector. No one else is having this debate around the world. They are embracing every tool of the public sector to embrace their private sector to try to beat us by outeducating and outinnovating us in a global economy, as the distinguished Presiding Officer understands. So we are in a global race where everybody understands it is all in. We use all the tools that we have.

We have the greatest private sector, the most robust private sector entrepreneurs that can beat anybody in the world. But we also have a public sector that creates the framework and support for that by having a rule of law, by having basic protections in place for the public.

As I had the opportunity to listen to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, particularly in the House, it seems every time there is a story--a salmonella outbreak--gosh, we had better bring some folks back. We have veterans hurting so we had better bring something back. We have women and children not getting baby formula through the WIC Program so we should do something about that. We have concerns about national safety so we should do something about that. It is almost as if we are educating these Members about the role of government in this process as they go. I didn't realize we did that. So maybe that function ought to be working. It is a chaotic way for the greatest democracy to operate, but that seems to be what is happening right now.

I remember in my times traveling to China, the last time I was there, where they said to me: Oh, you are here in Beijing on a great day; you can see across the street.

We are lucky. We can see across the street almost every day because we collectively have decided that one of the things we need to do to be able to breathe the air is to have certain rules, certain protections and standards in place so we can breathe the air. That is important to do through the public sector. We can't say: I will do the air in front of this desk, and you do the air in front of this desk, and somebody else will protect the air over here. It doesn't work that way. We do it together. So we don't have to worry about saying: I am in D.C. on the 2 days a year we can breathe the air and look across the street. We have the confidence of knowing that we have a quality of life, including the ability to see across the street and breathe the air, because in a civilized society, the greatest democracy in the world, we have made sure that those standards are there for our citizens.

I remember on a trip to Russia a few years ago they were talking about wanting to get more private sector investment into Moscow in Russia. I came home talking to our businesses and they said: The problem is they don't have a rule of law. We don't trust how we can invest there because we are not confident in their government, their rule of law. We don't have that problem here. We have the epitome of a

system with checks and balances, a rule of law. Up until all of this had begun, we have had the confidence available in the private sector on how to invest and know that there is a system in place.

I had the opportunity, with my agriculture hat on a few months ago, to be in Haiti where we see a great desire, meeting with the Haitian president, to bring in more business and investment from the United States. The problem is, you bring a shipload of cargo into the harbor, and you can't get it off the ship without paying bribes. They have no law enforcement system, judicial system, rule of law.

That is not true in our country. We do it through something collectively that we call government, that creates a way for us to make sure we can drink the water, breathe the air, see across the street, drive on the roads, have the opportunity for education for all of our children, and know that we can walk into a restaurant and have some level of confidence that the food is safe or go into the grocery store and know that.

We have research institutions that suddenly, after our colleagues in the House have been saying--and for years I have had personal debates with folks who said: We don't need a National Institutes of Health. Let the private sector do it. Yet we know collectively we are willing to share a risk of basic research to try to find cancer cures, to go over and over again on research until they get that one that may be able to move forward and be successful, in which case the private sector comes in and takes it from there. But we have done it together and shared the risk because we know it is in all of our interests to save lives--- in our own, our family Members, and others--whether it is Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes, cancer. All of those things are done collectively through this thing that we call government. That is why we have the best standard of living in the world. We are the wealthiest country in the world. We are the envy of the world. People want to come here and invest. They want to be a part of the opportunities in this country. And now we are debating whether or not, literally, there should be a public sector. Should we fund the police and the firefighters and the judicial system? There are those on the other side of the aisle who would say: We don't mean that. Every time we bring up something: We didn't mean that. I am not sure what they mean then in a civilized society.

We know we have challenges around issues of finance and debt. As chair of the Agriculture Committee, I am proud of the fact--and I have said so many times on the floor--that we are the only committee on a bipartisan basis that has actually brought a deficit reduction bill to the floor that has passed in the Senate. So I take a backseat to no one when we are looking at ways to cut duplication, to cut things that aren't important, to strengthen those things that are, and to save money.

But we do not do it by destroying our economy, by shutting down the services we all count on to protect us as consumers, to make sure our children have opportunities, to make sure we are safe and secure in this country. Obviously, that makes no sense. It is totally irresponsible.

What we are not talking about enough is that we have begun to see things happening in terms of the debt and deficit. We can continue to do that. In fact, the yearly deficit has been cut in half. I don't hear people talking about that, but the numbers say that.

A few years ago we set a goal of $4 trillion in debt reduction over 10 years. We are more than halfway there--not all the way there, but we have put in place a mechanism through cuts, through new revenue, through interest savings yielding $2.5 trillion in debt reduction out of the $4 trillion.

What is happening by shutting down the Government and threatening a default? That debt is going to go back up. We are going to undermine the work we have already done by adding increased costs through interest payments and delays that will actually increase the debt. We saw that in the last go-around in 2011. Even though there was not actually a default on the full faith and credit of the United States of America, we saw it because of exactly what is happening now. We had a lot of talk--in my judgment some very irresponsible talk--and posturing back-and-forth instead of working together in a reasonable way. We saw the markets affected, a drop of 2,000 points in the market, $800 billion in retirement savings of folks who worked hard all their lives and maybe are still working and cannot figure out why in the world we cannot work together in a reasonable, rational way to solve problems. There was $800 billion retirement savings gone. During that time in 2011, that summer, July and August, anyone who was signing up for a new mortgage is paying on average $100 more a month in payments because the interest rates were higher.

Instead of building on what we have already done together or even acknowledging it--it may not make good politics to acknowledge folks on the other side of the aisle. Unfortunately, it seems they certainly do not want to give credit to the President or give credit for anything we have actually been doing together. But the reality is the deficit has been cut in half and we are more than halfway to the goal that was set for savings over 10 years.

There is nothing that has been happening in the last few days-- shutting down the government, threatening possible default on the full faith and credit of the United States--that is helping us reach that goal. It is actually going in the opposite direction. As interest rates go up, billions of dollars will be added to the debt.

We have tried to figure out over the last number of months how to continue bringing down the debt and tackling long-term challenges while, by the way, creating jobs. The best way to get us out of debt is to create jobs so people can go back to work and be part of the economy. That is the best thing, and we are sure not hearing enough talk about that.

I am very proud to come from a State that makes things and grows things. It is manufacturing that is bringing us back, that is driving the economy, and it is agriculture where we have the biggest exports, in terms of export surpluses, in the country. We need to make things and grow things, focus on that. That will bring down the debt as we create more opportunities and more jobs.

In the last 6 months we have tried to go to a conference committee, a negotiating team, a formal negotiating process between the House and Senate on a 10-year budget that will bring down the debt, create jobs, do things in a fair and balanced way that puts middle class families first. We have tried to do that, as of today, 21 times. In fact, the chair of the Budget Committee has come to the floor and moved that we get to that process 21 times, joined by distinguished Members of the Republican caucus in the Senate who have come to say the same thing, let us go to a budget negotiation, a formal budget negotiation. Over 21 times the same folks who shut down the Government, the same folks who say it doesn't hurt anything if we default as a country, even though every economist, every business leader is begging and pleading and providing facts and information as to why it would be a complete disaster--the same people who are saying defaults don't matter, government doesn't work, except when they are reading something in the paper and somebody is saying there is a problem--they, those same people have, 21 times been able to block the Senate from going to a formal negotiation with the House on the budget.

We are in this crazy place where, on the one hand, when we step back we are actually seeing the economy slowly moving forward--of course until now, when it is beginning to be stymied by all of this. But the economy has been moving forward. The yearly deficit is coming down. We have been tackling the long-term debt. We are coming out of this. Then we have a group of folks who have decided in the big picture that there is no value in a democracy, in the greatest country in the world, in government. They don't seem to care about what it takes to provide an economy and so on.

Now they are saying they are willing to jeopardize the faith and credit of the United States of America, have America default on our bills and potentially send us not only and probably into a great recession similar to the one we just came out of, but economists tell us it could send us back even further, into the thirties or forties. They just do not know.

We are in a global marketplace right now where we don't know what happens when we default on our bills, when we lose the confidence of the world to invest in America or to even purchase our debt. We don't know what happens when small businesses see all their capital dry up and people are not able to get mortgage loans again or they cost much more than they did before and all the other ramifications of our not paying our bills.

There are colleagues who say the Secretary of the Treasury--who, by the way, came down and did an excellent job in the Finance Committee today. It was very serious. It was very sobering, but I thought he was clear and he was factual and I very much appreciate his coming to the Senate Finance Committee. But there are those who say he says October 17 is the last time extraordinary measures can be used to stop us from falling off the cliff and going into default and losing the full faith and credit of the United States--except, no, it could be the next day, it could be the day after.

Coming from a car State it reminds me of someone who is driving in their car and they look and it is on empty. You may have a little bit more. Sometimes they say you have 5 miles more, you have 10 miles more, maybe you have 30 miles more, but you are on empty and you are going to stop--the car is going to stop. The question is how often do you want to risk that and play that game when you know the car is going to stop.

That is, in my judgment, the kind of absurd and irresponsible debate going on right now--about whether the car stops immediately or in 2 miles or 3 miles or 30 miles. Why in the world would you want to put yourself in that position? Lord knows, defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States of America is much more serious than running out of gas in your car.

There is no reason for this--none, zero. This is a manufactured crisis. Do we need to continue to work together to tackle the long-term debt of this country? Absolutely. Count me in. Do we need to focus on what is happening to middle-class families who are getting squeezed on all sides and have a hard time just holding on? Do we need to focus on jobs in this country, making things and growing things and outeducating and outinnovating the world? Absolutely. Count me in. Count me in at the head of the line on that.

We in Michigan right now, in terms of our hard work and ingenuity, take a backseat to nobody. But to find ourselves in this craziness is beyond my understanding. I know people at home are going: What in the world is going on here? Can't you guys just come together and figure this out and quit making up crises and quit creating artificial deadlines and get things done?

I think it is important at this point in our history that we remember President Ronald Reagan said: ``Never before in our history has the Federal Government failed to honor its financial obligations.''

We are the greatest country in the world. Others look to us. They want to be like us. They want a vibrant middle class like America has had. We need to fight hard to keep ours and keep it growing. We need to make sure we do not fail to honor the financial obligations of this great country.

I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Through the Chair to the Senator from Texas, I am wondering if his motion includes the full funding of the VA medical system, which is a completely government-run, government-controlled health care system?

Mr. President, if I might, just to clarify so that I understand, because the Senator from Texas has, in fact, made the ending of a private sector competitive health care system for up to 30 million Americans part of what he wants to stop, I wanted to be clear that the fully government-funded, government-run, with government doctors system through the Veterans' Administration is something the Senator is advocating that we continue to fund through the Federal Government?

Madam President, not to object, I wish to clarify and ask if we might expand that to indicate the order which I believe we agreed to on the floor; that I be allowed to speak after my two distinguished colleagues, then Senator Whitehouse, and then Senator Coburn.

Madam President, first I apologize for the hoarse voice. I have been recovering from a cold. But it is important for me to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people from Michigan about what is happening, as everyone at home is scratching their head trying to figure

out why, in the greatest country in the world, we have seen government services now shut down and why there are those who think it is all right for us not to pay our bills and default on the full faith and credit of the United States of America, and why folks aren't willing to just open the government, pay our bills, and then negotiate.

In fact, we have been negotiating. We have negotiated on a lot. I am proud to say we negotiated a successful bipartisan farm bill not that long ago, a real deficit reduction proposal which actually passed the Senate with over a two-thirds vote. So we certainly are willing to negotiate.

Our leader Senator Reid was willing to negotiate and in fact did negotiate with the Speaker of the House. As we all know, the Speaker called him in September and indicated he would like to see a 6-week extension of the current funding levels for the government while we were negotiating something more broadly on a budget. It was at a funding level which we don't believe is the right one in terms of investing in education, innovation, and creating jobs, but it was 6 weeks. After talking with us, our leader said that in the interest of negotiating and compromising, we would be willing to do that.

As we know now from Republican colleagues in the House who said that was the intent, unfortunately the Speaker could not follow through on the agreement he had negotiated.

That is because a minority of the minority in the House that is extremely intent on--and in fact has successfully achieved one of the goals they ran on--shutting down the government. But we have negotiated.

We also have negotiated on the big picture. We know that a few years ago with the Bowles-Simpson Commission, with others, that $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years was picked as an important goal to be able to rightsize and bring down our long-term debt. The good news is that not only have we cut the annual deficit in half, but of that $4 trillion we have already agreed to $2.5 trillion of that in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. So over half of that has already been achieved.

When my friends on the other side of the aisle act as if nothing is happening, I have to say the deficit has been cut in half and, second, over half of a long-term goal on the debt has been achieved. We need to keep going. We don't need to shut down the government to do that. We do not need to default on our debts as the greatest country in the world to do that. We just need to work together to do that. That is why we would say we need to open the government, pay our bills, and continue to negotiate. Let's negotiate, but it is a continuation of negotiating.

In fact, weakening the full faith and credit of the United States of America--think of that, the greatest country in the world, the full faith and credit of the United States of America, that has been the highest standard in the world, when you say the full faith and credit of the United States of America--right now there are folks playing Russian roulette with that who are willing to weaken that and undermine our recovery, if not take us over another horrible economic cliff and cost billions of dollars for American consumers.

Given the seriousness of it and the fact that we are very close to having that happen and the fact that we are the world's leader, 30 years ago President Ronald Reagan warned about the consequences of the richest, most powerful nation in the world suddenly running out of money to pay its bills. He said:

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

prospect of a default--

As people are flippantly discussing these days--

by the United States of America are impossible to predict and

awesome to contemplate.

Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United

States of America [would cause] incalculable damage.

This is President Ronald Reagan.

President Reagan reminded Congress:

Never before in our history has the Federal Government

failed to honor its financial obligations. To fail to do so

now would be an outrage.

His words.

The Congress must understand this and bear full

responsibility.

We know if the United States defaults on its obligations, if we don't pay our bills, the result will be a financial crisis worse than what we went through in 2008. Frankly, I don't want any part of that. I know what happened in Michigan in 2008, 2009. I know our Presiding Officer, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, understands that as well, what happened to families and businesses all across America. To even come close to that is irresponsible.

If that were to happen, 57.5 million Americans could very well not get their Social Security checks on time.

My mom called me the other night. She is 87 years old, doing great. She said I was at church on Sunday and my friends were asking: That couldn't really happen, could it?

I didn't know what to tell her. No, Mom, it should not happen. It has not happened before. But I can't promise, given the words of people on the other side of the aisle who believe it is no big deal or of what is being said by the Speaker and by the tea party Republicans in the House--I couldn't absolutely say to her don't worry about that.

Madam President, 3.4 million veterans might not get their disability benefits on time. We have just been debating whether we should make sure, as we must, that the VA is fully funded. Yet next week if we do not back up the full faith and credit of the United States of America, veterans could very easily be in a situation of not getting disability checks or seniors' Social Security, Medicare. Children, families, communities, businesses, farmers, that is who will pay the cost of this default. Middle-class families will pay the cost of this.

It will be catastrophic in terms of interest rate increases and loss of jobs if we do not stand together as Republicans and Democrats in the Congress of the United States and back up the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

According to Goldman Sachs, if we adopt the ``China first'' model of only paying the interest on our debt, which has been proposed by the House, where we pay some of our debts but not others, the drag on our economy would be massive. They estimate we would lose 4.2 percent of our gross domestic product. To put that in perspective, when the recession hit bottom in 2009 we lost 4.1 percent of GDP, from the peak in 2007. That was the worst recession in our lifetime.

This is not a game. This is serious.

Even more concerning to me is that this would drive up borrowing costs for families, for small businesses, for our manufacturers who are back on their feet now and roaring and bringing back our economy. For every 1-percent increase in interest rates, we are told Americans will pay $75 billion--$75 billion lost to the economy. When Republicans in the House took us to the brink of default 2 years ago, which resulted in the lowering of America's credit rating for the first time in history--even though we didn't default, just talk of default ended up lowering our credit rating for the first time in America's history--it cost the average family buying a home at the time about $100 every month for the life of their mortgage in higher interest rates; $100 a month for the life of the mortgage. That is outrageous and irresponsible.

That same default crisis in 2011 cost taxpayers $19 billion in additional interest when our credit rating fell and interest rates went up. Where did that $19 billion go? Right back on top of the national debt, not only adding to the national debt, it threatens to erase America's retirement savings. In 2011, over $800 billion was lost in retirement accounts after the House Republicans played politics with the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

If I might just take 1 more minute, I ask unanimous consent.

This time, if we actually default, the fall could be even worse and the damage could be permanent. This is the greatest, wealthiest, most powerful country in the world and it is outrageous that this would even be considered.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the National Association of Manufacturers, expressing their deep concern about the possibility of default.

I will share, finally, remarks of the chairman of AT&T.

It is unthinkable that the United States could default on

its financial commitments and it would be the height of

irresponsibility for any public official to consider such a

course.

Our country deserves better. The people of this country deserve better. We have to do better for them.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we are in day 4 of a tea party Republican shutdown. We need to be very clear as to how we got here. The Senate majority leader negotiated with the Speaker of the House, and after a long negotiation in which the Senate made major concessions, we agreed to pass a 6-week funding bill for services of the government, to keep services open while we negotiate the larger issues around the budget.

We passed a bill with the funding levels asked for by the House Republicans. Republicans asked that we continue funding below the levels we believe are necessary to grow the economy for 6 weeks. Rather than having a government shutdown, at the time we believed it was in the interests of the American people, of all of those who provide those important services to us, that we, in fact, agree with the House on a 6-week extension. We sent it over to them, asked for by the Speaker, agreed to by the Senate. There it has sat.

Let me quote again from Congressman Dent--a Republican colleague of Speaker Boehner's--who said last night on ``PBS NewsHour'':

I do believe it's imperative that we do have a clean

funding bill, a straight funding bill to fund the government.

That was the intent of the Republican leadership all along.

But obviously there were a few dozen folks in the House

Republican conference who were not prepared to vote for a

clean bill and that is why we are in the situation we are in.

``A few dozen folks''--part of this tea party wing. He said: That is why we are where we are today.

You can overcome that very simply. Just bring the bill that the Speaker said he wanted, that we were willing to agree to for short-term funding of Federal services, bring it to the floor, and those few dozen folks can vote no and everybody else can vote yes. Then we would have the government back open. So it is truly a question of just letting the House vote. Just vote. Right now, today, before 5:00, we could be done with this irresponsible action. We could then make sure the Federal Government can pay its bills and not default and at the same time go to conference to negotiate the larger budget issues, which we need to do, but that is not what is happening.

So it is now day 4. Government services are still closed. The bill that could open them--which has a majority vote, which has Republicans and Democrats--is sitting in the House because admittedly Republican Members of the House are saying a few dozen folks did not like it.

Well, in our great democracy, our Founders said majority rules, but somehow we seem to have forgotten that around here. We have elections. The person who gets the majority wins. The others are not happy. They lose. Majority rules. Same thing happens on legislation.

So now we are in a situation with a group defined as ``a few dozen folks'' in the House driving the train because there is no leadership in the House to bring up the vote and be able to pass this continuing resolution with a bipartisan vote.

We are paying a very big cost right now as a country waiting for the House to vote. Nearly 800,000 people have been laid off--800,000 people. We are just barely coming out of the recession. We are coming back. We are creating jobs--not enough. When this President came in, we had six people looking for work for one job. Now it is down to three people looking for work for one job. That is better. It is not good enough. There is more to do, and we all know it. So what is the response? Well, let's just lay off 800,000 people in the middle of this effort to try to bring a middle class roaring back in this country.

There are about 7,500 people in my State of Michigan who are providing important services, people who are in middle-class jobs, have a mortgage, have at least one car payment, many sending their kids to college, trying to make sure they can care for their families, proud of what they do providing various public services that we all benefit from, and they are now sitting and waiting.

It is costing our country about $300 million a day--$300 million a day--in

lost wages and productivity, $300 million a day that we cannot afford to lose. This could all be ended in 5 minutes if the Speaker of the House would just allow a vote on a bill that contains the funding levels that the Speaker himself asked for, not those that we would like to see because on a longer term negotiation, we are going to fight very hard to increase opportunities for education and innovation, focusing more on economic growth and jobs. This is a number asked for for a short-term continuing resolution for 6 weeks. They evidently cannot take ``yes'' for an answer.

Today I had an opportunity to meet a wonderful little boy named Kai who is 2 years old. He and his mom Anna were with us talking about the impact on the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and other public health functions for our country and what it means to families.

Kai was born with a heart defect. He has had two bypass surgeries now in just his 2 little years of life. Thanks to a clinical trial at the Children's National Health System, Kai was able to get innovative treatment that he needs. He was running all over the place this morning, a great success story.

The things we do together as a country are what we should be proud of. The work that is being done by our doctors and researchers at places such as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration are literally saving lives. These men and women who are now furloughed, not working because of the shutdown, have gone through years of training. They are dedicated. They love what they do. These are some of the top experts on infectious diseases and food safety and cancer research in the country and in the world. Right now they are sitting at home, maybe watching us, trying to figure out what the heck is going on--or stronger language. They are not allowed to work. If they are working, they are not working with pay, all because of a few dozen folks in the House of Representatives, tea party folks who are running the show in the House who have decided they want to shut the entire government down over the Affordable Care Act, over the fact that we believe--the country believes there had to be a way to find affordable insurance for 30 million folks who have not been able to find and purchase affordable insurance.

The director of the division at the CDC that monitors food-borne illnesses--scary stuff like E. coli outbreaks--said recently he has three people working in his whole department right now--three people for our country monitoring food-borne illnesses, three people in charge of tracking every possible case of food-borne illness in the entire country.

This needs to be a wake-up call. It is time to get the government open so that people can go back to work who are in positions to monitor and protect our public health, the defense of this country, educational opportunities, and the safety of our country. Get these CDC officials back to work and make sure our families are safe.

CBS News reports that the Centers for Disease Control headquarters, which is in Atlanta, GA, is a ghost town. Folks who monitor infectious diseases have 6,000 employees in Atlanta, GA, and they are calling it a ghost town--in America, the greatest country in the world. The Director of the CDC, the Nation's top doctor in charge of infectious diseases, said he is ``losing sleep'' because ``I do not know that we will be able to find and stop the things that might kill people.''

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Let me go on and conclude. We heard on the floor earlier from the junior Senator from Texas, who spoke eloquently about the great work being done by the veterans health care system. It is unfortunate that it took a government shutdown for my colleague, I might say through the Chair, to understand how important a completely government-run health system is. The VA is completely government run and funded.

My colleagues who are opposing people buying private insurance through private exchanges and making their own decisions about what works for them, who are saying it is the end of the world if families can buy insurance that is more affordable for them and that they can actually get what they are paying for because insurance companies cannot kick them off when they get sick or block them from getting insurance if they have a preexisting condition--they are saying that is awful, but a completely government-run health care system called the VA should be funded.

I happen to agree with that. Our system through the VA is important for veterans. We need to keep it funded. We need to keep the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and every other part of our important system funded.

The House needs to vote.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for morning business, with debate only, be extended until 9:30 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, and that the majority leader be recognized at 9:30 p.m.

Madam President, let me speak for a moment about what we have happening. There is no reason for this happening, and there is absolutely no reason why, first of all, we could not have worked together to put a budget in place. We, months ago, passed a budget in the Senate and have been trying to go to a conference committee with the House so we could work it out and have a long-term budget that continues to bring down the debt. By the way, the deficit is coming down, which is very positive. But we know we need to continue to do more in a balanced way. That could be happening. It is not happening because the same people now who are putting us in a position where in a few hours there may very well be a government shutdown are the same ones who do not want to negotiate to get a budget for our country, which is very difficult to understand in terms of what the strategy is other than to just obstruct.

We are now in a situation where we have agreed to a compromise that would allow the continuation of funding of public services, from safety to health research, to what we do around education, innovation, small business. We have a whole range of things for 6 weeks. So we are talking about 6 weeks.

The compromise is that while we believe we ought to be reinvesting in education, in innovation, we ought to be creating jobs, rebuilding our roads and bridges and water and sewer systems, and doing a number of things that would strengthen our economy and create jobs, for this 6- week period, we agree to continue the funding level at the lower level the Republicans want.

So the continuing resolution we have sent to the House is a compromise by definition because we are willing for 6 weeks--while we negotiate a broader package on a full year's appropriation--to continue funding at the level the Republicans have asked to be the spending level. By definition, certainly for many of us who believe we will not have a middle class--that we cannot grow the economy without doing the right kinds of investments and that we certainly should not be cutting back on cancer research and cutting clinical trials for women with breast cancer or cutting back on other possible cures, and that is happening right now at this lower level--but for 6 weeks we have said we are willing to compromise with the House Republicans in order to continue funding the government while the larger issues are worked out.

Instead of that happening, what we are seeing is a fight that, frankly, has been fought over and over. It was fought in the last election. It was very clear we had a President of the United States who ran on and who made a signature accomplishment of his first-term health care--access to affordable health insurance for all Americans--running against someone who said he would repeal that, and the President of the United States won with a substantial margin.

In the Senate, we had Democrats running against Republicans, with Republicans saying: Elect me and I will repeal ObamaCare; Democrats saying: No. We need health reform. We need to create a better, more competitive way to bring down health insurance rates--like in Massachusetts, the home of our distinguished Presiding Officer. Our candidates--Democrats--won.

So I would suggest that in many places, and certainly across the country, with the President of the United States, the people of America spoke pretty strongly.

Now we are here. We all have seen the intensity of what is a minority opinion. I appreciate that. It is very intense. But it is a minority opinion in this country. So the minority of a minority is trying now to essentially slow down or stop the economy, hurt middle-class families, bring public services to a standstill because--even though they lost in the election, even though theirs is not the majority view--they have decided it does not matter--it does not matter--they are going to shut things down if they do not get their way.

What we are going to see tomorrow when healthcare.gov comes online are more competitive, lower rates for many Americans, young Americans, families, and so on, people who maybe could not get insurance in the past at all, moms-to-be who could not find maternity care--8 million women in this country who have not been able to find insurance companies that will cover them for maternity care because somehow being a woman was a ``preexisting condition''--they are going to have a chance to do that, which means we will have more healthy moms, we will have more healthy babies, and this is good for our country.

We are seeing now in health reform that has already taken effect hundreds of dollars a year more in the pockets of senior citizens that they used to pay out for prescription drugs. But they do not have to do it anymore because we are closing this gap in coverage from the Medicare prescription drug bill.

As a caveat, let me say as somebody at the time 7 years ago who voted no on that Medicare prescription drug bill--because I believed and the majority on our side believed it was written way too much in favor of the drug companies as opposed to the seniors in terms of costs, not allowing Medicare to negotiate group rates and so on--when we lost that fight, we did not shut down the government, we did not try to stop funding the implementation of Medicare prescription drugs, we did not do all of the antics that have been done. We said: OK, we lost that fight, so let's make it work the best we can make it work, and we will fix it later.

We did not stop the funding for the educational efforts for seniors. We did not spend hundreds of millions or--I do not know, maybe it is billions now--trying to scare people, confuse people. We said: Let's try to make it work. Even though in the May before the prescription drug bill took effect 21 percent of the public said they wanted it, they supported it, 7 years later, 90 percent of the public says they support it.

In health reform we were able to fix one of the things that many of us were concerned about then. Rather than

stopping the ability of seniors to get some help--even though it was not structured the way I would like to see it structured--rather than stopping that, we said: Let's make it work the best we can and look for opportunities to make it better.

Under the Affordable Care Act, we have made it better. We have made it better by closing the gap in coverage, which has been dubbed the doughnut hole, so that gradually under health reform this goes away, which will mean literally thousands of dollars in the pockets of many seniors.

I would suggest to our colleagues in the House and the minority of the minority here in the Senate who want to shut things down because they have not gotten their way on health reform that it would be so much better for the American people if they chose the path we did on Medicare prescription drugs, to try to make it work the best we can, and then to look for ways to make it better.

So instead of doing that, what we have is a situation where we are being held hostage--public services are being held hostage to eliminate something that, frankly, a majority of people already voted to say they wanted to put into place. Fix it, yes. If there are problems, yes, fix it. But they certainly do not want to go back to hundreds of dollars a month for a family for a policy that covers almost nothing, which is what has happened all across Michigan and all across the country.

This was a situation where women get discriminated against on the basis of gender, just because we are women or because we cannot find preventive care or we cannot find maternity care as women. We certainly do not want to go back to a situation where a family has a child who gets a serious illness and then suddenly finds, after spending hundreds of dollars a month on a policy that does not cover anything much, that there is a cap on how much care they can get for their child.

So they end up with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses, maybe going bankrupt, maybe losing their house, because even though they were paying for insurance, it did not cover what they needed. Then there is a limit on the number of treatments they can get. Oh, by the way, now that their child has a serious chronic illness, they cannot get insurance any more because the child has a preexisting condition.

This is the world in which tens of millions of families have been operating for way too long. We do not want to go back to that. I am certainly not going to be a party to going back to that. So we have said no. Negotiate on the budget. Be responsible. Focus on jobs. Move forward, yes. Take us back to a time of bankruptcy for families when there is an illness in the family? No. Take us back to a time when women were charged more than men just because we are women? No. Take us back to a time when seniors are paying more out of pocket for prescription drugs because of this gap in coverage? No.

We could go on and on. When we look at this whole approach, I do have to say given the fact that--we as women gain so much under health reform in terms of protection about unfair rates, getting preventive care without out-of-pocket expenses, access to maternity care, many women for the first time, so many other things.

A majority of those on Medicare are women. There are so many ways in which we benefit. We now see the House over and over sending us something that would delay or end health reform. Then today, on top of everything else, they have decided not only do what they want to stop the next stage of health reform, but they want to repeal what already is the law of the land now on preventive care for women, on family planning services, on mammograms, and all of the other preventive services that we know save lives.

The amendment that all of the Democratic women Senators offered under our leader, Senator Barbara Mikulski, which made sure that going forward, preventive care would be available and affordable, no out-of- pocket costs, that was repealed in what was sent to us today. It is also interesting that preventive services for men were not repealed. Only preventive services for women, without out-of-pocket expenses.

We find ourselves now in a situation where we are waiting for the House to send back something else again that will chip away at health care and put in jeopardy the ability for the Federal Government in the greatest country in the world to be able to provide services tomorrow, whether it is safety, whether it is health, whether it is education, whether it is the basics, like traveling with your family and needing a passport or visiting one of our national parks or any number of other things that affect us, protecting the air and the water, and what we do to support our farmers and so on.

So that is where we are. We will once again indicate that we are willing to compromise on the budget issues. This is a budget issue. We will support the level of funding that the House says they want, not what we want, because it underfunds critical investments in services and hurts the middle class. But for 6 weeks, as a compromise, we are willing to operate the government at the level that they want. But we will not take the next step which is to take away the ability of millions of Americans to have access to basic health care.

Tomorrow is an important day for so many reasons. But one of them is that for the first time, citizens across the country are going to be able to begin to get the information they need from healthcare.gov about what is available for them and for their families in terms of new health care options.

From what we have seen so far, the rates are not only competitive but lower than was estimated they would be. In fact, for most families and most individuals, they are going to be able to get much more care. They are actually going to get something they are paying for. They are going to be able to receive that at much less cost than they currently can. So tomorrow is an important day, where as they say in Michigan ``the rubber meets the road.''

People will begin to find out for themselves, despite all of the stuff that has gone on for the last 3 years, all of the misinformation, the scare tactics, the millions of dollars in horrible ads that have been run, tomorrow, people will be able to judge for themselves.

We certainly expect it will take a while, just as it did for Medicare prescription drugs, for it to fully take effect. People will have 6 months the first time around to figure out what they want to do to be able to sign up for next year. If we find that there are things that need to be improved on, then we need to come together and do that. We are more than willing to do it. But we are not willing to go back to the day where families could not find any care for themselves or their families or could not afford it.

We, in fact, are the greatest country in the world, and health care is pretty basic for each and every one of us. We need to have a system, which begins tomorrow through private sector insurance and competition, to have a way to be able to lower costs for families while making sure they are actually getting the care that they are paying for. That is starting tomorrow.

I hope tomorrow, in addition to that starting, we are going to see a continuation of critical public services in our country and that we will send a message around the world that America really can get its act together, that this Congress can really work together and be responsible and not see the kind of incredible partisan games that have gone on, not by everyone but by a minority of the minority who are right now holding things hostage in this Congress. We can do better than that. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in fact, to do that.

I am hopeful that the Speaker will just very simply put a continuing resolution on funding the government before the full body of the House of Representatives and let them vote. We have heard from many House colleagues today, Republican colleagues, saying that if they have an opportunity to vote on continuing the operations of government, they will do that, a clean CR, a continuing resolution that would allow the continuing functioning of services that the public depends on, and those who are providing as well are depending on.

The Speaker just simply needs to allow an up-or-down vote. Just allow a vote this evening. I believe if he does

that, he will see a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives that will be responsible and do the right thing.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, while I have a moment--I thought that there were others wishing to speak--since there are not, I wanted to take one more moment to speak about something else that is running out today that I am deeply involved in and deeply concerned about.

That is the 5-year agriculture, nutrition, and conservation policy of this country, the farm bill. We have seen the end today of the extension that was put in place last year because of House inaction. Starting tomorrow, we essentially begin to operate on fumes. We will see a time period in a few weeks when we will see the full impact of having no farm bill.

It is incredibly important that we use this time immediately to negotiate a final farm bill that will not only reduce the deficit, as our bill does by $24 billion, but one that can get a straight bipartisan vote as we did here in the Senate with over two-thirds of the Senate twice voting for a comprehensive reform bill that addresses supporting our farmers and ranchers from a risk management standpoint, while eliminating subsidies that do not make sense from a taxpayer standpoint, strengthening crop insurance, strengthening conservation to protect our land, and air, and water, focusing on regional and local foods, farmers markets, small farmers, to support them as well, new jobs and bioenergy, as well as investing in rural communities all across America through our rural development efforts.

What we call the farm bill really is the rural economic development bill for the country. Some 16 million people work in this country because of agriculture. This is the biggest jobs bill we will pass. Our farmers and all of those impacted have been waiting and waiting and waiting and, frankly, have had enough. They want this to get done.

So I call on our House colleagues again to join with us to be able to finally get this passed into law. This is incredibly important for the economy, for small towns such as the one where I grew up in Clare, MI, all across Michigan, all across the country.

It is incredibly important for our efforts to continue to protect our soil and our forests and our air and our water and to be able to maintain the beautiful outdoors that we do and support for hunters and fishermen and others that we do through efforts in the farm bill. It is incredibly important that this get done. It is long overdue.

So I couldn't let this evening go by without indicating that on the long list of things that have not been done, the September 30 date is incredibly important for rural America, for our farmers and ranchers who need help when they have a loss, for our families who need help when they have a loss, and for our ability to continue to grow jobs.

Our largest area of exports is in agriculture. It is a vibrant, important part of the economy. There is no excuse for this not having already been done. Again, too many games have been played attacking families who need help and choosing not to proceed in a reasonable, balanced way as we did in the Senate.

I am recommitting myself again, as I have day after day--and tomorrow--to making sure I do everything I possibly can. I call on House colleagues and on the Speaker to do everything they can in order to finally get a 5-year comprehensive food, farm, and jobs bill done so that we may continue to grow a very important part of the economy.

I yield the floor.

I rise to talk about the relentless assault on the poor and hungry in this country that is being waged right now in the House of Representatives and too often on the Senate floor.

The meltdown on Wall Street caused a recession in this country, as we know, that was worse than anything we have experienced since the Great Depression. Eight million people, eight million Americans lost their jobs. Trillions of dollars in the stock market were wiped out. With that money went the life savings of many middle-class families.

Many families lost their homes. Small businesses closed up shop. This was an economic disaster that hit communities across this country as hard as any natural disaster we have seen.

While Wall Street is doing well again these days, millions of families on Main Street are still waiting for their situation to improve. We are seeing new job creation, but millions of Americans are still out of work. In fact, when we look at the chart on employment rates, we see what happened in 2008 and 2009, the numbers of people who lost their jobs. While based on the population we are holding our own, we are just barely at this point keeping up with the population and beginning to grow again.

What the House Republicans are saying is get a good-paying job or your family will just have to go hungry. But there aren't enough good- paying jobs, as we all know. To add insult to injury,

they are slashing job-training money, which makes absolutely no sense, job-training money that States get to help Americans find work.

Economists point also to the irresponsible sequestration cuts as a cause for this sluggish job growth.

In the Senate we have passed a budget that will replace the sequester with a balanced solution to reduce the debt and balance the budget, but a handful of Senators on the other side of the aisle are blocking us from even being able to send negotiators to the House to finalize the budget. We are now stuck with a policy that makes absolutely no sense, that economists say is slowing down our economy and costing us jobs because of political games, pure and simple, in Washington.

This is having a very serious effect on the wallets of Americans who continue to find it difficult to put food on the table for their families. This is very real. It is not a political game for American families all across the country and certainly in my great State of Michigan. Even those people who are able to find work are working for less. In fact, wages as a percent of the economy are at 30-year lows.

When we look back, what has happened is not only is job growth not coming back as fast as it should, we are seeing people who have been in the middle class struggling by their fingertips trying to hold on or, most of the time, much of the time, losing ground because we are seeing wages going down, down, and down, even for the jobs that are available. This is a situation that millions of Americans find themselves in today. They are struggling to find work. When they do find work, the salary isn't even close to what it was before the recession.

Many people have taken pay cuts to keep their jobs or they have had their pay and benefits frozen for 4 or 5 years. Families who only 5 or 10 years ago were doing fine are now in dire straits.

Now the same Republicans who refuse to fix the sequester, who refuse to work with us to get the economy moving again for millions of middle- class families, again are trying to take temporary food assistance away from the children and families who are out of work or who are working one, two or three part-time jobs trying to make ends meet.

Let me stress as we debate the question of hunger and food assistance in America, we know that many families receiving SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are working. They are working.

About half of those families receiving food help are working. They are people with children and whose wages are falling behind so they are no longer able to feed their families.

For those who have lost their jobs, SNAP is a short-term lifeline to keep food on the table while they search for work. We know the average new SNAP recipient only receives help for 10 months or less. Let me repeat that. A person who is coming onto this program during this recession worked before they needed help. They are getting an average of 10 months' worth of help so their family doesn't starve while they are looking for work and trying to put the pieces back together. Then after that they are going back to work.

What we also know is men, women, families on supplemental nutrition assistance are using that money to feed their children. Nearly half of the people who are getting food assistance help in this country are children. We are looking now at nearly half being children, children who are going to bed hungry at night while their parents are doing the best they can to get back on their feet.

We see senior citizens who find themselves in a situation where their only income is Social Security. That little bit of food help makes a difference of whether they can go to the grocery store and put food in the cupboard or not.

The real faces of food assistance are veterans who went to war for this country, many of whom were injured and returned home only to find they couldn't get a job or their disabilities made it impossible to work. People with disabilities are the faces of food assistance. Instead of honoring these men and women for their service, House Republicans want to take away the little bit of help they get each month to buy food.

If we add all of this, 85 percent of the faces of food assistance, of SNAP, are children with their parents, people with disabilities, including our veterans, and senior citizens--85 percent. The bill being considered in the House of Representatives would kick millions of children and their families off food assistance.

This is how majority leader Eric Cantor and House Republicans will cut $40 billion in food assistance. That is what they will be voting on, probably tomorrow. They do it by cutting off individuals and families who need the assistance the most.

Under the Republican plan, which Eric Cantor says encourages people to get back to work, benefits for a jobless adult without children would be limited to 3 months every 3 years. They better eat a lot during those 3 months.

That means if you lose your job and you are unemployed for 6 months, half of the time you will be able to have help in order to be able to put food on your table. Once you find a new job, you had better make sure your company doesn't close and doesn't go overseas within the next 2\1/2\ years or you will not be able to have any help to put food on the table as well.

It is important to note that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that 14 million people will stop receiving food assistance over the next 10 years the right way. As the economy improves, they will get back on their feet financially and be able to find a good-paying job. We built into our farm bill reduced costs in SNAP because the economy is beginning to improve. But the House of Representatives, the House Republican majority leader's bill, eliminates families from food assistance the wrong way--by eliminating food help to those who most need it: 1.7 million poor, unemployed adults next year, whose average income is about $2,500 a year--$2,500 a year; those are the folks who would lose help with food--2.1 million low-income working families and seniors next year alone, 210,000 children who would receive cuts and would lose their school lunches under the House Republican plan, and other unemployed parents and their children--parents who want to work but can't find a job or a training program to join--will be eliminated from help.

The Republicans say it is about getting people back to work. But this bill cuts worker training and job placement for people who are trying to get back to work, who are mortified that, probably for the first time in their lives, they have needed help with food. They are people who have paid taxes their whole lives and who got caught up in this great recession and are trying to climb out but need a little help with one of the things I think we would all consider pretty basic--the ability to eat and provide food for their families.

People on SNAP want to work. They are like any American wanting to work, but there currently are not enough jobs, which is why we should be focusing on jobs and growing the economy. Right now we have three unemployed workers for every job opening. It is better. I can remember standing on the floor a few years ago saying the number was six unemployed workers for every job, and then five, and now it is three. But it is still three for every job opening.

Does the Republican plan do anything to help people find jobs or the job training skills they need to get a good-paying job so they can care for their families? No, absolutely not. In fact, the Republican plan would offer cash-strapped States a truly perverse incentive. I had to read this several times to see whether this was actually written down this way. They are allowing States to keep half of the Federal money that would be spent on food whenever they cut somebody off the program. So the incentive is to eliminate help for people so the State can keep half the money and use it for something else. That is in the House bill.

Let me be clear: We have seen occasions of fraud and abuse in the food assistance program, and that is why the Senate farm bill includes major reforms to crack down on misuse and to make sure only people who truly need help are getting help. We heard reports of people winning the lottery, two in my home State, but who are still getting SNAP benefits. That will not happen again under our bill. We have seen liquor stores accepting food stamps

when they do not sell much food. We have reformed that to make sure that cannot happen again, as well as a number of other areas where we can bring more accountability and tighten up the program.

We want every dollar to go to the people I am talking about today-- who work hard all their lives, find themselves in a bad situation and are trying to climb out but they need a little bit of help because their children are hungry, because they are hungry. Maybe they are a veteran or maybe they are a senior or maybe they are somebody with a disability who needs a little bit of help. So we have passed real reforms to crack down on abuses we have found, and we did it in a bipartisan way in the Senate. I am very proud of that.

What House Republicans are voting on is nothing more than an extremely divisive, extremely partisan political exercise that is, by the way, going nowhere, and it is jeopardizing the passage of a 5-year farm bill. We have never seen this kind of partisanship injected into agricultural policy in our country before. It is shocking what has happened in the last 2 years in the House of Representatives. And shame on the majority floor leader and his allies for doing it now.

Our farmers, our ranchers, our small towns and rural communities and our children and families do not deserve this. The 16 million people who work in this country because of agriculture do not deserve this. What is happening this week in the House of Representatives is not about reality, it is about some fiction they have made up--an idea if the stock market is doing well, if wealthy Members of Congress and others are doing well, then surely everyone in America must be doing well too. And anyone who isn't must be lazy or not trying hard enough.

The reality is most people in America are still struggling to get back on their feet from the recession. There still aren't enough jobs for every person who needs and wants one. The jobs that are there pay less than they did 5 years ago, and families getting food help are making about $500 a week. They do not have money in the stock market. They do not have investment income. In fact, the average SNAP family doesn't have more than $300 in assets--things they own. What they do have, though, because of our policy of supporting those families, is $4.53 a day to eat. That is right, $4.53 a day to eat--less than the cost of one specialty coffee at our favorite stores.

But some Members of the House of Representatives have decided that is too much, that $4.53 a day is too much for our disabled veterans, too much for our senior citizens living on Social Security, too much for our children, for families working multiple part-time jobs and trying to figure out how to get out of the hole that was created not by them but by others in the great recession.

We all want to spend less on food assistance, and the good news is, under the Senate farm bill we all voted on, we do spend less. The baseline for food assistance is going down. Why? Because the economy is improving. There is $11.5 billion in reduced spending built into our farm bill because people are finding jobs, and that is added to the $4 billion in fraud and misuse we have included.

Again, the Congressional Budget Office projects that 14 million people will leave the supplemental nutrition program as the economy improves because they will no longer need temporary help. Costs are going down the right way, because the economy is beginning to improve. And as it improves more aggressively, which is what we should be working on together, we will see those costs go down.

I should also add that SNAP recipients are already going to see an arbitrary cut, unfortunately, to their benefits on November 1 because of the expiration of the Recovery Act help that temporarily boosted assistance to families in need, which we did in 2009. So they are already going to see less available for food.

If we want to continue to cut spending the right way, we should be working together to invest in our economy, to support our businesses, large and small, to outinnovate the global competition, to get rid of the sequester and to help people get the training they need to find good-paying jobs.

The Republican approach is like saying: You know, we are so tired of spending money on wildfires--forest fires--so we will cut the budget for the fire service. That isn't going to work. The fires will rage on and they will only get worse. If we want fewer fires we have to find ways to prevent fires and contain the fires in order to reduce the cost.

The Republican approach is also like saying: We are tired of paying for the cost of drought, flooding, and other crop disasters so we will cut crop insurance. The government's cost of crop insurance went up over $5 billion--50 percent--last year because of droughts and flooding and so on. It went up 50 percent. And while we are seeing increases in crop insurance, it is projected that food assistance is actually going down $11.5 billion over the next 10 years.

Are the House Republicans proposing we eliminate help for farmers in a disaster or just low-income families--children, seniors, disabled veterans--when they have a disaster?

What is happening in the House right now is a complete reversal of 50 years of great American values. Today, in the United States of America, one in six people say they do not know where their next meal will come from--one in six Americans in the greatest, the wealthiest country in the world. We have a long history in this country of making sure that poverty and hunger are kept in check. In fact, Presidents on both sides have understood this. President Ronald Reagan said:

As long as there is one person in this country who is

hungry, that's one person too many.

That is one person too many. I wish our House Republicans could hear that and understand what he was saying. What would he have to say about this effort now in the House of Representatives to blame the victims of poverty and unemployment, to blame the children, to blame the seniors, to blame the veterans, who only want enough food to be able to eat and, for those who are able, to work and to get back on their feet and get a job?

The House Republicans who are proposing these drastic cuts all have enough to eat. We in the Senate are not living on $4.53 a day for food. We have enough to eat. None of us wonder where our next meal is going to come from, like the one out of six Americans. None of us have to worry about whether our children will go to bed hungry tonight. None of us have to skip meals so our children don't have to.

We in America are better than the debate that is being waged in the House of Representatives. The good news for children, families, seniors, the disabled and veterans across America is that the House bill will never see the light of day in the Senate. It is time to stop the political games around hunger in America. It is time to work together and pass a 5-year farm and food bill, to grow the economy and reduce the need for food assistance the right way--by making sure every American has the ability to have a good-paying job so they can feed their families and achieve their part of the American dream.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I too join with our colleague from Oregon in raising great concern about what this proposal would do. This is a proposal--we have seen, actually, three of them now--that would cut all Federal funding for any community that has either defaulted or, more important, is at risk, has problems financially. What does that mean? It means that any city, any county, any local unit of government that is struggling with a tight budget could potentially lose all Federal funding. We are not talking about a bailout here. We are talking about the same Federal funds that go to every community--no funding for emergency services such as police departments and fire departments; no funding for transportation, for roads and bridges; cutting off funding for special education and for our schools; no funding for economic development to help these communities that are challenged because of, possibly, economic circumstances such as a shifting manufacturing base or other economic issues beyond their control.

This is extremely broad. According to some legal definitions, ``default'' could mean anything--late payments on any kind of an obligation. It makes absolutely no sense.

Let me also indicate that one of the real concerning problems here is that it would exempt emergency spending for a natural disaster. I appreciate that the Senator from Louisiana would want to do that given the fact that we had Hurricane Katrina hit in New Orleans and our whole country came together. People in Detroit raised money to help with Hurricane Katrina. But I suggest that for the 41 cities and counties that filed bankruptcy over the last 20 years or the hundreds from Texas, to Kentucky, to Alabama, and beyond who now have troubled bond ratings and are considered at risk--this is really a slap in the face to every city and community across our country.

This is not about stopping a bailout for Detroit. We are working hard. People are coming together. This is a community that is coming back thanks to a tremendous amount of grit, hard work, and leadership from the business community, religious community, community leaders, and so on. This is about whether we are going to support communities that need some help.

Think about this: If a city is doing well and has a wealthy tax base and an upper middle-income community with high-powered lobbyists, then they should get Federal money--taxpayer money? Children with disabilities can get special education. We are going to help build roads and bridges in communities. But if a community is having some financial difficulty, then, unfortunately, we would say we would not allow the same ordinary Federal funding every community gets to be available for that community. That is not the right values for America.

That is why the International City/County Management Association, the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Government

Finance Officers Association strongly oppose this effort.

I have one final statement to make before turning to our distinguished senior Senator from Michigan.

When we are looking at what is happening right now in Detroit and around the country, once again we are seeing workers and retirees on the frontline who have lost their pensions and their wages. In the auto rescue, we saw Delphi retiree pensions were not protected. Now in the city of Detroit, police, fire, and city workers are not protected. So when we talk about the middle class of this country--people working hard every day--we need to put them first. We need to make sure nobody loses their pension. We need to make sure we stand as a country with cities that are in distress and working hard to become vibrant and strong again.

I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague from Arizona for his passion on this issue.

Yes, it has been my goal from the beginning of this farm bill process to end unnecessary subsidies and to clean up areas of waste, fraud, and abuse starting with the direct payment program. The program is indefensible in this current budget climate. It makes absolutely no sense to pay farmers when they don't suffer a loss and to pay people who aren't even farming.

That is also why we included the strongest reforms to the commodity programs in the history of the farm bill, eliminating payments to people who are not farming and tightening the AGI requirements and the amount any single farmer can receive.

We even have reformed the crop insurance program. The No. 1 thing we have heard from listening to farmers all across this country is that they need market-based risk management tools.

Farming is an extremely risky business. Farmers plant seeds in the spring and hope that by the time the harvest rolls around there will have been enough rain and the right temperatures to give them a good crop. That is why we strengthened crop insurance and made that available to farmers growing different kinds of crops--because we want farmers to have skin in the game. As I have always said, that is about farmers paying a bill for crop insurance, not getting a check from the direct payment program.

My friend from Arizona is correct. The Senate has repeatedly voted to end direct payments.

Yes, that is my intension. I strongly agree we should not be spending taxpayer dollars to fund these direct payment subsidies, and I will do everything I can to make sure the conference committee adopts the Senate version on this issue.

I would also say to my friend from Arizona that if we do not get the farm bill signed into law by September 30, then direct payments are scheduled to continue. So I hope we can count on the Senator's support to make sure we can pass the farm bill in time and eliminate direct payments.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues who have been patiently waiting. I know there are many Members who wish to speak.

I thank my colleague from Arizona.