Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Sergio Plaza and Warren Erickson of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session and that Katrina Rogachevsky be granted floor privileges for the duration of this week.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business for debate only until 7 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, my good friend from Tennessee has raised just another effort to divert resources from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act which we can then use to fix the very problems he has mentioned. I will point out that we report jobs data on a monthly basis, and this is going to be a different standard. I might also point out that in Medicare Part D, we release those data on a monthly basis.

I agree with my friend that there should be accountability for the mistakes that have happened and the implementation of the law going forward. In fact, right now, the Department is giving us daily updates on their progress in fixing the Web site.

So, again, let's get on with business. I think enough focus has been placed on the mistakes. Hearings are ongoing. There will be hearings in the Senate also. Let's get the problems fixed and move ahead on enrollment without diverting resources.

I thought about my friend's proposal, and I thought maybe we should amend it to say we will put in more money and get more people. I don't think my friend would want to do that, either, so we can take care of it.

So the people there need to get the problem fixed, and let's move ahead aggressively to get people enrolled in what is going to be a positive change for health care in America.

On that basis, I object.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Wednesday, October 30, 2013, at 9:15 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to mark-up S.__, Children's Hospital GME Support

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, October 31, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Attaining a Quality Degree: Innovations to Improve Student Success''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Aissa Canchola of the committee staff on (202) 224-2009.

Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, again, I want to thank my colleague and good friend Senator Alexander for a great working relationship on our committee. Obviously, we have differences of views and opinions on matters--that is the nature of legislation and this body--but we have always worked together in a very conciliatory fashion, and open, and working things out. So I appreciate his approach and the fact that the Senator is willing to give us cloture so we can get an up-or-down vote. I understand he has certain reservations about the nominee. I understand that. But, again, I thank my colleague for being willing to get us to the point where we can have an up-or-down vote on Mr. Griffin.

Madam President, tomorrow--we were going to vote today, but the leader came out and announced there was an agreement on both sides to put the vote off until tomorrow to consider the nomination of Mr. Richard Griffin to serve as General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a very important role as the top prosecutor for violations of this country's labor laws.

Given his depth of experience and knowledge of the act, Mr. Griffin is exceptionally well qualified for this position, and I have no doubt he will do an outstanding job of enforcing our Nation's labor laws for workers, unions, and employers.

In July, we confirmed five new NLRB members, preventing the agency from shutting down, giving it a full slate of members for the first time in a decade. With a fully functional five-member Board and a new Senate-confirmed General Counsel, it is my hope we can provide this important agency with some much-needed certainty, mark a new positive chapter for the NLRB, and finally put an end to the delay and obstruction that has recently become all too familiar every time a new NLRB nominee is appointed. Without relitigating the previous controversies, I think it is fair to say that over the past few years the NLRB has been the target of unnecessary political attacks and obstruction.

What most concerns me about this political game-playing is how it affects the everyday lives of working people across America. These attacks on the Board have had real consequences for real people.

Working Americans need and deserve a fully functioning agency to protect their rights and enforce our Nation's labor laws. That is why over 75 years ago Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing American workers the right to form and join a union and to bargain for a better life. For both union and nonunion workers alike, the act provides essential protections. It gives workers a voice in the workplace. It allows them to join together and speak up for fair wages, good benefits, and safe working conditions. These rights ensure that the people who do the real work in this country see the benefits when our economy grows and are not mistreated or put at risk on the job.

The National Labor Relations Board is the guardian of these fundamental rights. Workers themselves cannot enforce the National Labor Relations Act. The Board is the only place workers can go if they have been treated unfairly and denied the basic protections the law provides. Thus, the Board plays a vital role in vindicating workers' rights. In the past 10 years, the NLRB has secured opportunities for reinstatement for 22,544 employees who were unjustly fired. It has also recovered more than $1 billion on behalf of workers whose rights were violated.

I know many times people think: Well, a lot of these old abuses of workers whom you read about in your history books--well, that is just history and we have gotten over that. Quite frankly, I wish that were the truth. But the fact that in 10 years 22,544 employees were reinstated because they were unjustly fired indicates there are still unfair labor practices being committed by businesses today. And $1 billion recovered on behalf of workers just in the last 10 years--that is $1 billion that unscrupulous companies took from their workers without the right to do so, and the NLRB got that money back for workers. Think about that: $1 billion.

The Board does not just protect the rights of workers and unions; it also provides relief and remedies to our Nation's employers, our businesses. The Board is an employer's only recourse if a union commences a wildcat strike, for example, or refuses to bargain in good faith during negotiations. By preventing labor disputes that could disrupt our economy, the work the Board does is vital to every worker and every business across the Nation.

Further, the NLRB, you have to understand, is divided into two independent sides. There is the Board side, which adjudicates and interprets the law; then there is the General Counsel side, which investigates filed charges, prosecutes violations, and generally supervises the processing of cases. The general counsel position is important because the NLRB receives about 20,000 to 30,000 charges per year from employees, unions, and employers, and it is the primary function of the general counsel to make sure these charges--each charge--are thoroughly investigated and prosecuted if they are determined to have merit.

The general counsel also serves an important role that some of my colleagues may not know about. The attorneys in the General Counsel's Office help facilitate settlements to resolve disputes efficiently. For example, when two unions picketed Walmart in 2012, Walmart filed a claim with the NLRB, and the agency negotiated a settlement. Indeed, settlements are not the

exception at the NLRB but the rule, and they are encouraged. In fact, over 90 percent of meritorious unfair labor practice cases are settled by agreement, either through a Board settlement or a private agreement by the two sides.

Now that I have discussed the importance of the NLRB in protecting rights and the role the General Counsel plays at that agency, I want to turn the page and talk about Mr. Griffin, the nominee who is before us now to be the General Counsel, and I want to again indicate why I strongly support his nomination.

Richard Griffin has a wealth of experience as a labor lawyer. He is deeply steeped in labor and employment law. He most recently served as an NLRB board member himself from January 2012 until this past August. Prior to that, Mr. Griffin was general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers for more than 17 years. Mr. Griffin actually began his legal career over 30 years ago at the NLRB as a counsel to Board members.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have agreed that Dick Griffin is well qualified to serve as general counsel--indeed, I think his expertise in labor law is difficult to question--but some of my friends on the Republican side continue to oppose his nomination because of an outstanding legal issue that has nothing to do with Mr. Griffin's previous public service, his background, or his ability to function in this new position.

Here is what this is all about: Much has been made about the process by which Mr. Griffin was previously recess appointed to serve as a Board member. The controversy began when the District of Columbia Circuit Court issued a ruling in a case which is called the Noel Canning case that diverged from the decisions of three other courts of appeals--the Second Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and the Eleventh Circuit--and my friends on the Republican side are questioning the validity of an appointment process that has been in place for over 220 years. And that was the decision in the Noel Canning case. Subsequently, two other appeals courts have addressed this issue. The Supreme Court is set to resolve the legal issue once and for all during this session of the Supreme Court.

Again, to sum it up, we have different circuit courts deciding differently on an appointment process that any President uses to fill recess appointments. This litigation is still pending. The legal question remains unresolved until the Supreme Court decides it. But a number of my colleagues during that period when we had different circuit courts deciding differently on this appointment issue called for Mr. Griffin to resign his position on the Board, even though he had done nothing personally wrong and he had taken an oath of office to fulfill his duties.

I believe that request from my Republican colleagues was unreasonable. There was clear precedent at the Board for Mr. Griffin to continue to serve until the final legal matter was ultimately resolved. When there is a split among the circuit courts of appeals, the NLRB has a longstanding history of waiting until the legal question is resolved by the Supreme Court before they take action, particularly when the issue involves the Board's operability.

The situation that was facing the Board after this Noel Canning case is directly parallel to a circumstance by the Board a few years ago when the Board only had two members--only had two members. The DC Circuit ruled in a case called the Laurel Baye case that the two-member Board lacked a quorum to do business. Even after the DC Circuit's decision, the two-member Board, one Republican, one Democrat, continued to hear and issue cases until the Supreme Court ruled on the question.

Not a single Republican Senator called on either one of those two Board members to resign simply because they refused to acquiesce to the decision of the DC Circuit. So here is what happened. Mr. Griffin and his fellow recess appointee Sharon Block acted appropriately in following this direct precedent and continuing to serve on the Board until the Supreme Court addressed the validity of their recess appointments.

To argue that Mr. Griffin's decision to uphold his oath of office and follow the Board's prior practice, that somehow that makes him unqualified to now serve as the Board's General Counsel is, quite frankly, a position I think is not only disappointing but I think without substance.

In addition to this questionable objection, Republicans also continue to claim that recent NLRB nominees, including Mr. Griffin, are unacceptable simply because they have worked on behalf of workers or unions and support our system of collective bargaining.

These nominees have been accused of being biased and unfit to serve. But now I want to point out what the law actually says. Keep in mind, when Board members, as well as general counsel, are appointed to the Board and we confirm them, they take an oath of office to uphold the law. So it is kind of interesting to note what the law actually says that they are sworn by oath to uphold.

I have often quoted from the National Labor Relations Act on this point. I will do so again. Here is what the law says, the National Labor Relations Act--the law that Board members and eventually Mr. Griffin, if he is confirmed--and I believe he will be--will take an oath of office to uphold. Here is the law. I will quote it exactly as it is written:

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to

eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to

the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these

obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the

practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by

protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of

association, self-organization, and designation of

representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of

negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or

other mutual aid or protection.

Those are the exact words. That is what the law says. The purpose and the policy is to promote collective bargaining, to promote collective bargaining and freedom of association, protecting workers and their rights of self-organization, the designation of representatives of their own choosing. That is what the law says.

I think the fact that Mr. Griffin takes that purpose seriously makes him more qualified, not less qualified, to serve as general counsel. His past career is not cause for concern. Most labor lawyers devote their careers either to representing workers and unions or the management. That is the nature of practicing labor and employment law.

We have confirmed NLRB nominees in the past, some of whom have been union side and some have been management side. We have done so without substantial controversy. The fact that Mr. Griffin happens to come from the union side practice does not make him inherently biased. For years, Republican and Democratic Presidents have appointed promanagement attorneys to fill positions at the NLRB.

There is even the one example of where a Board member came directly from an in-house position at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But I do not hear anyone on the Republican side accusing those nominees of bias. I guess it is only when you represent labor unions that you are biased, not when you represent the Chamber of Commerce.

I would also like to point out that while I certainly have not agreed with the politics or ideology of every past NLRB nominee, I voted to supported Republican nominees, such as Phillip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson, who are on the Board now, not because I agreed with them but because, given their experience and their diverse backgrounds, they were qualified to serve. They were qualified, as is Mr. Griffin, eminently well qualified.

Board members can and do separate their past work as an advocate from their work as a neutral interpreter of the act once they are confirmed. I am absolutely sure Mr. Griffin will do the same if confirmed as General Counsel. I have every confidence that Mr. Griffin will be, in the words of one of the current Board members, not prounion, not proworker, not promanagement, but pro-act, pro-Labor Relations Act or put maybe more succinctly prolaw, prolaw enforcement.

With this in mind, and for all of the reasons I have mentioned, I urge all of my colleagues, my Republican colleagues, to consider voting for Mr. Griffin because he deserves a strong bipartisan vote.

As I stated earlier, I voted for Republican members. When we had Board members earlier this year, in July if I am not mistaken, in July of this year, Democrats voted for the two Republican nominees, again not because we agreed with them ideologically, maybe where they were coming from, but they were qualified to serve.

Yet when we have nominees with whom the Republicans are opposed ideologically, even though they are well qualified, Republicans vote no. Think about that. When we have nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, whom the Republicans support, to whom we may be opposed ideologically but they are qualified, we vote for them. Democrats vote for them. When we have nominees to the National Labor Relations Board who are well qualified but whom the Republicans disagree with ideologically, they vote against them--quite a difference.

Now is the time to start breaking that down. It did not used to be this way. It never was this way in the past. If they were qualified under a Republican President, we would support them; a Democratic President, we would support them. We wanted to know what were their qualifications, what were their backgrounds, were they vetted properly--no criminal activity, nothing in their background that would indicate they could not judiciously act openly and fairly.

I am sorry it has gotten to this position now where Republicans feel they have to vote against someone to the National Labor Relations Board simply because that person was a lawyer for a labor union. I voted for NLRB members who were lawyers for businesses. That is fine. I have no problem with that. Why do my Republican colleagues have such a problem voting for someone who was a lawyer for a labor union? Labor unions are legal entities protected by national law, the National Labor Relations Act.

So I hope again that my Republican colleagues will look at Mr. Griffin for who he is, for what he is, for his background, eminently well qualified, has always been fair, has always been judicious--a good lawyer.

Yes, he represents labor unions. But in all of the vetting we had in our committee on Mr. Griffin, we had people from the business side and others who all said he represented labor unions, but he did so fairly. He did that fairly, with competence and with the ability to work out agreements with the other side. What more can you ask?

I am hopeful this vote tomorrow will mark a new beginning for the National Labor Relations Board. We will have a vote on cloture and then we will have an up-or-down vote. So we have 60 votes for cloture to bring it to a close. Then there will be up to 8 hours of debate on the nominee. I do not think we need to take that long. I am hopeful some of my Republican colleagues will vote for Mr. Griffin and start to break this thing down, where if it is someone appointed by a Democratic President, Republicans vote no; if it is someone appointed by a Republican President, Democrats vote no. That should not be the way it should be, not the way it has been in my lifetime here, in all of my time in the Senate.

I have served with three Republican Presidents in the Senate. They have made nominations to the National Labor Relations Board. I have been on this committee since then. We always supported them. As long as they were qualified and they went through the vetting process and they were qualified, it was fine. The President should have his nominees. We would vote for them.

I am hopeful we will get back to that. I hope we will have a new era, where the agency is no longer haunted by political attacks, political games. It is time, long past time, to allow the NLRB to function as the law intends and let the dedicated public servants who work there do their jobs.

We will have this vote, I am told, tomorrow afternoon on cloture. As I said for the benefit of Senators, we will have up to 8 hours. I do not imagine we will take all of that. We will have up to 8 hours of debate on the nominee. Again, I hope we have a good strong vote on both cloture and on the nominee himself. Mr. Griffin, as I said, is eminently well qualified--eminently well qualified. Nothing in his background would ever indicate that he would be anything less than an outstanding counsel at the National Labor Relations Board.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Molly Ganley, Katrina Rogachevsky, and Thomas Hecht of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

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

Mr. President, here we are, it is October 14, and the government has been shut down for 2 full weeks. We are about 3 days away from a debt ceiling deadline. I keep hearing rumors that a deal is close. I certainly hope that is true, that we do make some breakthroughs and we get through this impasse, but I have some observations on that, and I thought I might take a moment to set the record straight based on what I have been hearing over the weekend on some of the talk shows and some things that came out over the weekend.

In the last day or so there was talk about Democrats putting ``a new issue'' on the table, that Democrats are now putting sequestration on the table in these talks. Well, I don't know how anyone could think this is a new issue.

In March the Senate approved a budget that replaced sequestration with a mix of entitlement reform and revenue increases.

In April the President put forward a budget that replaced sequestration with again a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.

Throughout the spring and summer the Appropriations Committee, on which I serve, debated and passed bills that conformed to the budget resolution replacing sequestration. Republicans in the House and Senate have taken part in this debate. Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee responded with a letter objecting to our policy of replacing the sequestration cuts.

The House passed its own budget, the Ryan budget, which also takes their position on sequestration. They even made it worse by preventing cuts in the military and taking all the rest out of nondefense discretionary spending. I know that sounds like a big word, but it is spending that comes out of things such as education and social services and health, NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and all those other things.

Now, again, we heard a lot of talk by Republicans on the Senate side that we Democrats were violating the Budget Control Act by coming in at a higher level than what sequestration called for. At the same time, the Republicans on the House side violated the Budget Control Act by not taking 50-50. In other words, the Budget Control Act said that if sequestration goes into effect, then the cuts have to be made 50 percent from defense and 50 percent from nondefense. The Ryan budget-- what they did in the House--left defense whole and took everything out of--as I said, everything else, mainly out of health, education, labor, and that pot of money.

So I guess you might ask whether both sides violated the Budget Control Act. No. Both sides had their approach on how to deal with the Budget Control Act. The Budget Control Act is not the Ten Commandments written in stone for all eternity. It is a law. And when we have laws around here, periodically, guess what. We change them or modify them, of course.

So the Budget Control Act was passed, the supercommittee was set up, it didn't hit its goals, so sequestration went into effect. Now that we have seen the disastrous consequences of sequestration for this year, those on my side of the aisle said: Well, look, it is time to get rid of sequestration, and let's make our decisions as legislators on how we want to spend the taxpayers' money and how we might want to raise revenues.

The Republicans on the House side--I don't say they violated anything,

they just did their own thing. They said: To heck with the Budget Control Act. We don't want to take any money out of defense. We will leave that whole and take it out of everything else.

That would have been the proper time for the House and Senate Budget Committees to get together in a conference so they could work out their differences. But 19 times we have come to the floor to ask to go to conference on the budget, and 19 times the Republicans have refused to let us go to conference to even talk about it. So sequestration is the biggest difference between these two budgets.

I might add, with regard to the budget Mr. Ryan came up with in the House, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, a Republican, called it ``unworkable,'' for whatever that is worth.

Nonetheless, sequestration is the biggest difference between our two budgets. Again, that is why we asked to go to conference time and time again. So sequestration is not some kind of new issue. It is the issue of the year. It will be the issue of next year. Do we blindly cut everything? Sequestration is a blind cut of everything, even programs everyone here might agree are worthwhile and should be funded. But that is what we are elected to do. We are elected to make those kind of choices and work them out in a conference committee.

If you think sequestration is some kind of a new issue, I guess it is only a new issue if your memory is only 2 weeks long. If you know what has been going on for this year, sequestration is the major difference.

Two weeks ago Senate Democrats compromised in an attempt to keep the government open. How did we do that? We agreed to keep the government open for 6 weeks--at that time, until November 15--at the current levels, which included the sequestration cuts. It was not in our budget, but we agreed, to give us time before Christmas to go to conference and work out the differences. We passed it at the same level which was included in the continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives. We agreed to compromise our level down to the House level for 6 weeks to keep the government open. We passed it and sent it over to the House. It has been sitting there ever since. Speaker Boehner will not permit it to come to the floor for a vote. Why? Perhaps he knows if he brings it up for a vote, it will pass and the President will sign it.

Instead, they began this by saying we had to change ObamaCare. We had to make changes in the Affordable Care Act--which has nothing to do with this budget, by the way. That didn't work. So now they have shifted to a whole bunch of other demands. And we have never really gone to conference. What the Republicans are now saying is we should give up a whole year. Forget about the budget resolution we passed here, and agree to what they passed in the House for the next year without even going to conference.

So first the Republicans in the House won't agree to negotiate on the budget unless we agree to their top priority--no revenue increases. Then Republicans insist upon shutting down the government to stop ObamaCare. Now this weekend Republicans have been saying they won't agree to reopen government or lift the debt ceiling until Democrats agree to the total spending level in the Ryan budget. This is truly unprecedented.

We heard over and over Republicans wanted the Democrats to produce a budget. We did. Now they are doing everything in their power to avoid discussing our budget. But what is truly incredible is that Republicans want the world to believe Democrats agreeing to a compromise for 6 weeks was an agreement to give up our entire budget for the whole next year. I don't know why the press is playing into this. They seem to be saying it is tit for tat. It is one side; it is the other.

No, it is not. We agreed to 6 weeks. Now the House says that we must agree to it for 1 year. That was never part of our budget we sent to the House. So that is not a compromise.

I will happily vote for a bill that extends the current level for 6 weeks or so. We have already voted for that. The House wanted 10 weeks. But I think a debate over whether to keep or change sequestration for the year--which is the entire debate between the Senate and the House budget resolution--is too important to be used as a bargaining chip for basic government operations.

I didn't watch the Sunday shows. I rarely ever do. I have better things to do on Sunday. But I couldn't help but read the paper this morning, and there was a statement in the paper made by the senior Senator from Arizona. I guess he was on a talk show, and they were quoting him.

Senator McCain said: I guess we could go lower in the polls. Right now we are down to blood relatives and paid staffers.

That is kind of cute. And I am quoting the newspapers, so I don't know if he said it this way or not. He said: But we have got to turn this around and the Democrats had better help us.

What does that mean? They are the ones that shut the government down. As I said, there is a bill before the House right now. If the Speaker would put it on the floor, it would open the government. We passed that here. We helped them. We agreed to their level for 6 weeks. How much more help do they need?

The more I read about this in the print and watch the news programs, the more it becomes clear to me there is an attitude being pushed by the Republicans that if they agree to reopen the government and if they agree to extend the debt limit, they are doing us Democrats a favor. Read between the lines. It is like they are doing us a big favor to do this. Therefore, we have to give them all these concessions because they are doing us a favor.

I tell my Republican friends, they are not doing us Democrats a favor whatsoever. If they agree to reopen the government and extend the debt limit, they are doing the Nation a favor, not the Democrats. So get that out of your head that somehow, because you are willing to do that, we have to give concessions on something else. We can talk about concessions, and we can talk about sequestration and other budgets when we go to conference--if they will let us go to conference. Nineteen times they have opposed us going to conference. But talking about concessions now as a means of reopening government or extending the debt limit--that shouldn't even be a part of the equation. Somehow the press continues to report this as a legitimate demand on the part of Republicans; that if we want to open the government, then they get to demand certain concessions. Why is that legitimate? The legitimate thing is to reopen the government. It is very simple.

Other people have come to the floor to talk about the impact of sequestration, and I thought I would just take a moment again--I did the other day, I will do it again today, and I will continue to do this--to alert people as to what another year of sequestration would mean for programs which come under the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, which I have been privileged to chair or be the ranking member of since 1989. Here is what would happen next year if we continued sequestration: Some 177,000 fewer children will get Head Start services. Maybe that is not your kid or my grandkids. Everybody here has plenty of money. But it affects a lot of low-income families in this country.

And 1.3 million fewer students would get title I education assistance--no kids of anybody in this body or the House, none of our grandkids. We have plenty of money. But low-income families all across this country, in urban areas as well as rural, get title I assistance.

And 760,000 fewer households will receive heating or cooling assistance under what we call LIHEAP, Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program. Again, it won't affect anybody in this body, it won't affect anybody in the House, and probably none of our families. But it will affect 760,000 households with an elderly person without much money, maybe just living off a Social Security check and nothing else.

Special education programs under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We fund a portion which goes out to the States. By sequestration, the less money we put out will mean 9,000 special education staff will be cut from classrooms. Maybe the

States will come up with the money. Maybe local taxpayers will come up with the money. I am just saying, under sequestration we will not be paying for 9,000 special education teachers and staff.

Sequestration next year means $291 million less for child care subsidies for working families. These are families that go to work every day, and many are single parents. These are low-paying jobs, and the only way they can go to work is to have some kind of child care subsidy, and $291 million will be taken out of that. Again, it won't affect anybody here.

Two billion dollars less for the National Institutes of Health. That is 1,300 fewer research grants next year. Which one of those grants will lead to breakthrough discoveries in medicine and cures?

We have a fraud and abuse program in Medicare. It recovers $7.90 for every $1 we appropriate. A lot of that comes because of overcharges from drug companies. We have seen cases in Wisconsin and a number of other States with huge settlements because the drug companies were overcharging. For every $1 that we put in, we recover $7.90. Because of the cut, because of sequestration, we will lose about $2.7 billion next year in funds that we would assume we would get back. Aside from that, drug companies know we won't have enough cops on the beat, and that will be an excuse for them to just start overcharging again.

So those are just a few of the things that will happen if we continue sequestration. There are probably some on the other side who just don't care. For example, one Member of the House Republican caucus asked Representative Bachmann about the government shut down, and she said: We are very excited. It is exactly what we wanted, and we got it.

Then there is Representative Culberson who reportedly said: It is wonderful. We are 100 percent united.

What are they excited about? They are excited about the government shutdown. They are probably excited about sequestration. They are excited about hundreds of thousands of low-income kids not getting Head Start. They are excited about low-income families not getting heating and cooling assistance. They are excited that special education teachers will be cut. They are excited about this. This is their vision of America.

The tea party had some big gathering here in Washington the last few days. I happened to be reading about it. There was one woman there talking to reporters. She said we need to go back to the late 1800s in this country when we grew our own vegetables.

I thought to myself, fine. If you want to, you can do that. There is nothing restricting her from going out and living without electricity or running water, health care. She can go find a cabin someplace in the woods, I suppose, have a little plot of land, grow her vegetables, do her own canning. You can do that, if you like.

But why does she insist that we all want to do that? I don't think a lot of people want to go back to the late 1800s in this country. Think of what life was like then: child labor, people working 60, 70 hours a week, no minimum wage, no Social Security, no Medicare, no education for a lot of low-income kids. If you had money, you were fine. Disease was rampant--polio, measles, smallpox. That was the late 1800s. That is what the tea party wants. They want to go back to that. They keep up this hue and cry about that; things have just gotten out of hand.

Things have not gotten out of hand. We are a big country. We are a big nation--powerful, big. We have a lot of economic assets, but we have a lot of human assets too. We have to take care not just of the economic assets but our human assets as well. There are no economic assets without human assets. We need to invest in our people and not listen to those who want to turn the clock back to the 1800s. That is what sequestration would start to do. It would start to turn the clock back--oh, maybe not to the 1800s--I don't want to exaggerate--but certainly before the Great Society and certainly, probably, even before the New Deal. They do want to get rid of Social Security. They do want to get rid of Medicare.

I guess Grover Norquist, who is sort of their patron saint, said: We want to reduce the size of government so small we can drown it in the bathtub. That is what they want. That is their vision of America. That is their vision of our future.

I am hoping we do reach some agreements and we can get out of this. But the Republicans have dug themselves in this hole, not us. Now they say they want us to help them. We already have. We passed a bill and sent it to the House to open the government. We now have before us, as we did on Saturday, a bill to extend the debt limit without strings attached until December 2014. Every single Republican voted against even going to that bill to even discuss it on Saturday. I opened the newspapers on Sunday to read about it, and there is very little talk about that. Is there something I missed? Did we not have a vote here on Saturday on a motion to proceed to raising the debt limit for 1 year-- just to go to the bill so we can discuss it? People could offer amendments. Every single Republican voted against even going to that bill, even discussing it.

We have thrown plenty of lifelines out there. If what the senior Senator from Arizona meant by ``help'' is that we have to give up on everything in terms of our budget, sequestration, all that other stuff, that is nonsense. I made a counterproposal. I said if they are going to keep putting all that stuff on there as conditions, we ought to start putting conditions on it too.

If they want some help, how about raising the minimum wage right now? That would be something we could do. Wouldn't that be neat? If they want to reopen the government and extend the debt ceiling, let's raise the minimum wage right now for people in this country. I would put that on the table right now. I would put on the table that we need to put more money into special education to help our local taxpayers and more money, certainly, into early childhood education. Maybe those are the things we ought to put on the table, saying: If you want help, agree to these things. I will not go there. But if they continue to push this idea, if the Republicans continue to push this idea that somehow we have to capitulate on everything else, then I think we just throw these things on the table and say: OK, you want us to agree to that? You agree to this. We will have a little tit-for-tat on that and see how far it goes.

That is why this whole talk about giving up on sequestration and budget matters is a nonstarter. Open the government--very simple. Extend the debt limit--very simple. Then go to conference and talk about this. That is the way out of this. That is the real, adult, democratic--with a small ``d''--way out of this mess. I call upon the Republicans not to do us a favor. Do the country a favor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President. I understand that we are in session for Senators to speak for up to 10 minutes?

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, we are here on Saturday, and we just had a very significant vote in the Senate. The vote was on whether we would move to a bill, fully debatable, to raise the debt ceiling without any strings attached.

The Republicans, en bloc, voted against that. As a result--since we need 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor--the vote was 53 to 45. There should be no mistake in anyone's mind. This was a very clear vote, simply to move to a bill, fully debatable, amendable even, but the Republicans would not even vote to go to that bill today.

Quite frankly, I must admit that when I was driving in to the Senate, I was thinking about this. I thought what we will do is that we will get on the bill. Obviously they will vote for cloture to proceed to the bill, and then we will get on the bill. I was wondering to myself how long we will have to be on the bill, what kinds of amendments would be offered, and then would we have to file cloture on that bill also.

I was quite surprised to see every Republican vote against even going to the bill. It begs credulity. I am incredulous at this, especially with the markets opening in Asia later tomorrow, on Sunday. How are they going to read this? I think if we had voted to at least move to the bill and debated it, they would have stabilized somewhat because they would say at least they are willing to talk about it. Now they can look at the bill and say simply, Republicans are not going to discuss this.

It is shocking that this would have transpired today at this last minute. No one gave up anything in the bill. It was simply to move to the bill, and the Republicans said no.

We have been closed for 2 weeks. I have come to the floor several times, as I know others have, to talk about this irresponsible and dangerous episode in our Nation's history. I understand that different groups are coming together trying to float some kind of an idea.

I hope something comes of it. I truly hope cooler heads will prevail and we will reach some agreement that will allow the government to reopen, allow the debt ceiling to be extended with no strings attached for at least 1 year or more--at least to get us through the next elections of 2014--and then we ought to go to negotiations.

Our Budget Committee passed a budget. The House passed its budget. They should meet and try to work it out in conference. Our Appropriations Committee passed our bills. The House hasn't passed all of them. Then we could go to work and work these things out in the next 6 weeks, up to December 1. I hope that works and we get that kind of a compromise, but I do not want to see some kind of compromise which says to one side or the other that you have to do this or you have to do that.

It should be open. Our Budget Committee is under the able guidance and direction of Senator Murray of Washington. I am not a member of the Budget Committee, but they ought to go to conference without any strings attached or some artificial levels put in. They ought to take what we passed as the budget, as the House did.

What is happening is that--and it is getting worse every day, another week, another 2 weeks--it is unfathomable how many more people are going to be hurt.

A lot of Americans may think sequestration wasn't a big deal or that closing the government wasn't. I saw a piece in the paper where some tea party people were meeting. What came through is they weren't being directly hit or hurt by the government shutdown.

One respondent was quoted in the paper as saying: We need to go back to the late 1800s, the way this country ran then, where everybody grew their own vegetables.

I would say to that person: If you want to grow your own vegetables, you can grow your own vegetables. If you want to live somewhere without electricity, air conditioning, with no health care, and never go to the doctor, you should be able to do that. But why should you make the rest of the country go back to the 1800s?

This is what a handful of people are trying to do. They can't do it legislatively, they can't do it through the courts, they can't do it politically, and they can't win elections on that basis. So they are trying to do it by holding a gun to our heads, keeping the government closed, and threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States.

I wish to say in the few minutes I have remaining what another yearlong sequester would mean in human terms. These are things that come under the jurisdiction of my Appropriations Committee, which I have been privileged to chair or where I have been the ranking member since 1989. We have never had these kinds of problems before-- Republicans or Democrats--when Republicans ran it or Democrats. I have been back and forth on this many times, in terms of Republicans chairing it--Democrats, Republicans, Democrats. We have never had these kinds of problems.

If we go 1 more year under sequester, that means 177,000 fewer children will get Head Start services--177,000--and 1.3 million fewer students will receive Title I education assistance. What is Title I? This goes to the poorest kids, the poorest families, the poorest areas. So 1.3 million low-income kids won't be helped.

Oh, our kids will be fine, kids from the middle class, the upper class, and of Senators and Congressman. They have money. I am talking about the poor kids, and there are 1.3 million.

There are 760,000 fewer households that would receive less heating and cooling assistance under the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, and mostly they are elderly poor people.

There will be 9,000 fewer special education staff in the classroom. In other words, under IDEA we provide money for special education teachers and support staff for special education students, and 9,000 will be cut.

There will be $291 million less for childcare subsidies for working families, for people who need childcare subsidies. They are low income, they are going to work every day, but they need some childcare help-- $291 million cut away from that. How many will not be able to go to work or what will they do with those children? Will they put them in substandard childcare facilities?

One thing that is mind-boggling is we have a program in Medicare that goes after fraud, waste, and abuse. We know from the past that for every dollar that we put into that, we actually recover $7.90. I don't mean something phony. I mean we actually bring back $7.90 for every $1 dollar we put into it.

Because of the cut under sequester that means in the next year there will be $2.7 billion that we will not recover. By reducing the number of people in the fraud, waste and abuse section, that means it opens the door to fraud. People say: Oh, they are not there. They are not checking, right?

People say: Well, now we are going to give them flexibility under sequester. But there is no flexibility. That has to be cut.

Another yearlong continuing resolution under sequester means $2 billion less for the National Institutes of Health, which means 1,300 fewer research grants.

Again, I would say that people say: Well, we will give flexibility. My colleague on the other side says: We will have sequester, but we will leave flexibility to the departments.

Let's see how that goes.

The funds for the Administration for Children and Families--what would they do? Would they preserve Head Start slots by cutting childcare subsidies?

At NIH, would you preserve cancer research by cutting Alzheimer's research? These are terrible choices. Flexibility does not answer these questions. It is not the answer.

When they talk about flexibility, I know what is on their mind-- military spending. Everybody likes to talk about the sequester and the level of sequester. Do you know what the House did? A sequester says it is 50/50, 50 percent cut from defense, 50 percent from

nondefense discretionary. What the House did in the Ryan budget was to leave things whole and take it out of things like Head Start, IDEA, special education, and programs such as that. They took it out of there, but they left defense whole. That is not at all what was in sequester.

In my area of Health and Human Services, education, labor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NIH, next year we would cut about $34 billion. People will say, I don't know what that means. As I said, it is how many more children will not be in Head Start, how many more families will not get childcare subsidies, how many more research grants will not be funded by the NIH. We will not have our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologists out in the field watching for food outbreaks, food-borne illnesses, et cetera.

It is a disaster if we continue with the yearlong sequester and a continuing resolution. That is why we need a short-term one, so our committees can go to work. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail, and we can get a better budget for next year before the end of the year. To me, this is the way to proceed.

I yield the floor.

Does the Senator from Wyoming still have the floor?

Will the Senator from Wyoming yield for a question?

My friend from Wyoming mentioned the fact that we should bring up appropriations bills. As someone who has been a member of the Appropriations Committee for quite a long time, I would remind my friend from Wyoming that earlier this year, on the first appropriations bill that we passed out of committee under the leadership of Senator Mikulski--it was the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill--if I am not mistaken, it had a number of Republican votes in committee. It was brought out onto the floor. An extraneous amendment was offered by the Senator from Kentucky, whereupon I believe Senator Mikulski, our leader, filed cloture on the bill so we could vote on the appropriations bill.

I say to my friend from Wyoming that all the Republicans on that side voted against cloture, voted against taking up that one appropriations bill--I am sorry, I am reminded that we had one Republican, the Republican from the State of Maine who did vote to go to cloture on that bill, one Republican out of all those on the other side.

I say to my friend from Wyoming, we tried to bring up the appropriations bill. It was Republicans who objected to even dealing with that appropriations bill. I would ask my friend from Wyoming if he had looked at that history and understood what had happened on the bill that came up at the time.

I thank my friend from Wyoming for yielding.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak before I object to the unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, the Senator from Florida, now wants to fund the Head Start Program. That is all well and good. We all recognize how invaluable the Head Start Program is. But I must say that listening to this request and the previous request and the other requests that have come up reminds me of an analogy.

The Republicans, quite frankly, have torn down the wall of government, and now they want to rebuild it brick by brick, but the way they want to rebuild it is by stacking the bricks. Here is a stack of bricks here, here is another stack of bricks, and here is another stack of bricks. Anyone will tell you that if you build a wall like that, it will be very weak. It won't hold together.

Our government is built from a wall of interconnected bricks. Look at a brick wall sometime. See how the bricks are interconnected. It provides strength. They all rely upon one another. They are interconnected. They provide a bulwark. If you stack those bricks one after the other, you will have a weak wall.

Now what the Republicans are saying is: Well, we have torn down that wall by shutting down the government. Now we want to build it brick by brick, but we will just stack them. We will have a brick here and a brick there.

This is what I am getting at with that analogy. The Senator from Florida wants to fund the Head Start Program--all well and good--but the Head Start Program is not a separate brick in that wall, it is interconnected to so many others.

A variety of other Federal programs are used in the Head Start Program. For example, States use the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program. They use the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families-- TANF--Program. They use the social services block grants to provide wraparound services. In this way, for example, they can use some of those funds to extend the Head Start day from half a day to a full day. They can extend it from a full day to later hours for parents who have different working hours and working conditions. Under a shutdown, we don't have these other programs. So you might have the Head Start Program, but these other ones are all shut down.

Head Start providers use funding from the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which is funded under a whole different auspices of the government, but this food program comes in to provide healthy meals and nutritious services. I say to the Senator from Florida, I have visited a lot of Head Start centers, and they have nutritious food for these kids. That doesn't come under the Head Start Program, that comes from the Child and Adult Care Food Program. That is also shut down right now.

So, again, you could fund the Head Start Program, but all these other programs interlock and provide the support necessary for a good Head Start Program.

I might also say that the Head Start Program is a need-based program. So if someone wants to get their child into a Head Start Program, sometimes documentation is used and needed--documentation such as last year's tax returns. What was your income? Well, as long as the IRS is closed right now--out of 94,000 active IRS employees, 87,000 are furloughed--the IRS is not processing those.

The point I make to all and to the Senator from Florida is that it is not enough just to say: I want to reopen the Head Start Program. All of these bricks are interlocked. That is why it is so important to get the government running again.

If the Senator from Florida wants to cut funding for some of these other programs, there is plenty of opportunity to do that through the legislative process and the appropriations process. But just to say we are going to fund the Head Start Program, I say, with all due respect, that is a cruel irony to hold out to all of the families who use the Head Start Program that somehow, yes, we want to fund Head Start, but all the other things that go to support it and make it work, we are taking that away, and like a wall built of stacked bricks, it will fall over because it won't have the other supports that are needed.

So I respectfully object to the request from the Senator from Florida.

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

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: Are we under a 10- minute time limit? Is that correct?

Mr. President, Erik Fatemi, the clerk of my appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, is leaving the Senate this week after 12 years of sterling service. On behalf of Senators from both sides of the aisle who have had the good fortune to work with Erik over the years, I would like to take a few minutes to express our gratitude.

Knute Rockne was probably the alltime great coach at Notre Dame, and he knew that the Almighty had a special feeling for that team. But Rockne was fond of saying: ``I've found that prayers work best when you have big players.''

Successful committee chairs in the Senate have the same approach. We know that it is not enough to be on the side of the angels; we have got to have big players. Here in the Senate, that means big intellect, big heart, big work ethic. And those are qualities that Erik Fatemi possesses in superabundance.

Erik joined my Appropriations staff in early 2001, a few months before Senator Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to Independent, giving Democrats back the majority in the Senate. So Erik has been in the minority with me, then the majority, then back to the minority, and now in the majority again.

Over the years, Erik has acquired a profound knowledge of the appropriations and legislative processes that is widely respected not just by Members and staff in this Chamber, but also in the administration. And with Erik, it's not only a matter of know-how, it is also a matter of know-who. Over the years, Erik developed important relationship of trust and respect, especially

with top researchers and institute directors at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health since 2009, recently said about Erik: ``Erik Fatemi stands out in my mind as one of the most effective staff members I have worked with on Capitol Hill. Erik is the exemplar of an effective appropriations staffer: he has always mastered any of the issues he's been involved in and he has always demonstrated the 'passion for anonymity' of a loyal staff member. An expert on NIH, Erik has always been tough, fair and compassionate. He always asked the tough questions and would not give up until he got straight answers--wether it was from the NIH or the broader biomedical research community. And in all of his dealings with NIH and me, he has always kept uppermost in his mind the millions of patients and their families who count on the treatments, cures, and preventive measures that publicly-funded biomedical research makes possible. Throughout his career, in his dedication to his boss, Tom Harkin, and in his commitment to patients and their families, Erik Fatemi has been a superb Appropriations staffer and a model public servant.''

As notable as Dr. Collins praise is, I long ago lost track of the number of times people have thanked me for things that Erik played a huge role in getting done. Let me mention a few of his many accomplishments.

One signal achievement of my time as chair of the Appropriations subcommittee was collaborating with Senator Arlen Specter to double funding for the National Institutes of Health over a 5-year period. Erik played a very significant role in making that possible in 2001, 2002, and 2003--and that is something that he can be very proud of.

In the late 2000s, I was chief Senate sponsor of the Stem Cell Enhancement Act, to remove the administration's arbitrary restrictions on stem cell research and Erik was my lead staffer on the bill. With Erik's invaluable assistance, we passed the Stem Cell Enhancement Act twice in Congress with large bipartisan majorities. Unfortunately, the bill was also vetoed twice by President Bush. And do you know what. That is about the only thing that can stop Erik Fatemi: A veto by the President of the United States. The good news, of course, is that we ultimately prevailed, with President Obama's executive order in early 2009.

During and after the great recession, Erik took the lead in identifying and responding to the impact the downturn could have on our Nation's education system. He illustrated for me and other Members of Congress the devastating impact educator layoffs would have on our children's education and our Nation's future. The historic Recovery Act and the later Education Jobs Act kept hundreds of thousands of teachers and other educators in our schools, and Erik helped me shape the debate and passage of those critical laws.

Erik played a key role in the creation of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at NIH, which is accelerating the pace of getting new cures and therapies to the patients who need them.

He also oversaw production of the 2012 report ``Under Threat: Sequestration's Impact on Nondefense Jobs and Services.'' This was the first comprehensive State-by-State projections of the destructive impacts of sequestration on nondefense discretionary programs.

All of these accomplishments amply demonstrate Erik's skills and talents as a top Senate staffer. But Erik is more than that. He is the quintessential humble public servant who works long hours on behalf of this institution and the people of the United States.

Let me cite just one aspect of that humble service. Over the years, Erik has spent countless hours explaining to thousands of constituents and advocates what was happening on Capitol Hill at any given moment. I can't imagine how many times and to how many audiences he has patiently explained how the legislative process works, especially the arcane and sometimes bizarre workings of appropriations.

As a Senator, I have always appreciated that when Erik couldn't tell my constituents the answer they wanted to hear--which, unfortunately is most of the time, especially these last few years--he would respond to every question and e-mail promptly and honestly. In dealings with Erik, people always know that he is listening and taking their concerns seriously.

Finally, I also want to express my appreciation to Erik's family members, especially his wife Alisann and their beloved daughters, Caroline, Kathryn, and Anna Christina. They, too, have sacrificed as Erik has spent many late nights and weekends toiling in the Dirksen Building. It was not easy to experience those absences, but I hope you realize that Erik's work has made a powerful difference for the American people.

Erik, I join with the entire Senate family in thanking you for your outstanding service. We wish you, Alisann, Caroline, Kathryn and Anna Christina much happiness in the years ahead.

Mr. President, more and more interesting figures are coming in to my health committee from around the country with regard to what is happening around the Nation in terms of the health care marketplace, ObamaCare. The Republicans said it was going to be a failure and all that kind of stuff and how it was going to cost so much more money. I do not have it for every State. It is starting to come in. But I have it for some States and I want to give this body and people watching some of the initial figures that have come in on the savings to families. For example, in Alabama, $2,013 premiums for a family of four--median premium for month. This is just the average, take the median. In Alabama, for a family of four this year the premium was $557.58 a month. We now know the marketplace premium, family of four making $50,000 a year with the tax credits, their monthly premium will be $112 a month, a savings of $445.58 a month for a family of four making $50,000 year in the State of Alabama.

In my State of Iowa, that median premium per month for a family of four this year was $549.58. The marketplace premium for that family of four at $50,000 with tax credits is now $103 a month, for a savings of $446.58 per month for that family of four.

I was looking at Oklahoma. Their median premium this year was $684 a month. The marketplace premium for that family of four--again, $50,000 a year--with their tax credits, believe it or not, is $63 per month. They will go from $684 to $63 a month. Those families will have a savings of $621 a month in the State of Oklahoma.

The median premium per month for a family of four in Texas this year is $504.50. Their marketplace premium for a family of four making $50,000 a year, after the tax credits, $57 a month, for a savings of $447.50 a month. It is an amazing savings.

Many of these people are getting insurance for the first time. Many of these people may have had a preexisting condition or perhaps they worked in a job that did not give them health care coverage or perhaps they simply couldn't afford $500 a month in Texas, but now they can afford $57 a month and get coverage for their family of four, and they will get a subsidy for buying that marketplace insurance.

Is this what the Republicans want to stop? Is this what they want so desperately to stop that they are willing to shut down government? They ought to talk to some of these families in Texas, Iowa, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Michigan.

The premium for a family of four in Michigan is $381 a month this year. In the marketplace it will be $80 a month.

Georgia's premium for a family of four is $448 a month this year and will go down to $132 a month under the marketplace. That is what the Republicans want to stop? Well, I think we are seeing that what the Republicans really wanted to do was to keep the same old system we have where health insurance companies call the tune, you pay the price, and if you couldn't afford it, tough luck, go to the emergency room. Now we are going to cover all Americans.

More and more information will come in, and as it comes in, I will take the floor to give more and more information about the call centers. Right now--in the last 2 days--over 7 million Americans have visited healthcare.gov

to get more information on what they can do to sign up. Again, the marketplace call center--these are calls, not the Web site--received over 295,000 calls since midnight on October 1. The wait time has been cut in half so now the wait time is only 2 minutes. The wait time is only 2 minutes if you call in to the call center.

Again, I want to repeat what I said yesterday--and I know the majority leader said it this morning--about the dangers of continuing this government shutdown. I quoted a Congressman from Iowa who said in Politico:

We passed the witching hour at midnight last night and the

sky didn't fall and the roof didn't cave in.

Is that what has to happen? Does the sky have to fall and the roof have to cave in before we do something? I pointed it out yesterday, and I will point it out again today: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is closed down. Why is that important? Well, we are now in the flu season. More than 200,000 Americans are hospitalized due to the flu each year. In a mild year 3,000 people will die from the flu, and in a severe year that number could rise to 50,000.

The CDC monitors which strains are circulating around the country and which communities are being hit the hardest. They are the ones who look at how to contain it and keep it from spreading. They are not doing that now because they are shut down.

Food safety: Twelve days ago, 162 people in 10 States became ill with hepatitis A because of eating frozen berries. Right away the CDC got on the job, sent their epidemiologists out there, tracked it down, isolated it, recalled it, and found out it was pomegranate berries from Turkey. Well, 162 people got Hepatitis A, but nobody else did. CDC is not out there doing this now because they are shut down. That was just 12 days ago.

What if we have another outbreak of food poisoning? How fast will it spread? How many people have to get sick? Is that what this Congressman from Iowa is saying, that we have to have more people get sick? Is that what he means when he says the sky hasn't fallen or the roof hasn't caved in?

In August, cyclosporine infected 643 people from a salad mix. It started in my home State of Iowa. They immediately called the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC got on it right away and found that this salad mix was sent to 25 States. They recalled it all, traced it to salad that had come from Mexico, and they stopped it.

How many people have to get sick? Do we have to have a West Nile virus, hepatitis, e. coli, or a vast outbreak of the flu virus before they say: Well, that is enough, I guess we can start the government up again. It is totally irresponsible to say: Well, we can shut down the government because the sky hasn't fallen and the roof hasn't caved in.

Members of Congress are getting their paycheck. They are coming to work every day. We are here and we are getting our pay. How about all of those government workers who work on our staffs, on our committees, and run the Senate? They are good, hard-working public servants, and they are out of work and not getting a paycheck.

I have staff people who don't make a lot of money. They have families, a mortgage, and maybe a car payment to make, but they don't have any money coming in. If they wanted to go to the credit union here to get a bridge loan to get them through the crisis, they can't because the credit union is shut down. Now where do they go? Do they get the money from their credit card? I say to the Congressman from Iowa that for these people the roof has caved in and the sky has fallen.

There are thousands of Head Start kids who will be sent home from Head Start this month and working parents will have to find something else for them. What are they going to do? For them the sky has fallen and the roof has caved in. Don't we care about them?

I mentioned Social Security too. Social Security will still take your claims and your application for a Social Security card, but that is it. You won't get it because the backlog is backing up. They will take it, but they won't process it.

I mentioned that 445,000 people call their Social Security office every day in this country. They will not get an answer now. There are 180,000 people who visit a Social Security office every day in this country, but they can't now because they are closed. They lost their Medicare card or Social Security card or they need a new Medicaid card.

There are 22,000 Americans who file for retirement benefits every day and 12,000 apply for disability benefits. They can still apply, but they are not going to get any help. For them the sky has fallen and the roof has caved in.

What is this Congressman saying, that the sky has to fall on him and the roof has to cave in on him before he will do something to help open the government? And to hear them talk about it--a representative said ``this is about the happiest'' she has been. This is a Congresswoman from Minnesota. ``This is about the happiest I've seen members in a long time,'' she said.

``We are very excited,'' said Representative Michele

Bachmann. ``It's exactly what we wanted, and we got it.''

Shutting down the government is exactly what they wanted and they got it.

``It's wonderful,'' said Representative John Abney

Culberson of Texas, clapping his hands to emphasize his

point. ``We are 100 percent united.''

So this is where we are. The tea party group in the House is happy to shut down the government. It is the happiest they have been, they said. They want this discord, disunity, chaos, and confusion. The American people don't want that.

The American people don't want to turn their back on ObamaCare either because they see that now they are able to get coverage. Even if they have a preexisting condition, they can get a good rate for themselves and their families which they could not get before.

Now it is time to open the government again, put people back to work so we can meet our responsibilities to the American people.

I call upon Speaker Boehner to take the continuing resolution that is sitting over in the House now--it is a continuing resolution that will open the government. He says we wouldn't negotiate. We already negotiated because before that we had one level of spending in the bill, they had a lower level of spending, and we agreed with them. We took the lower level. We took the Republicans' level.

All he has to do is bring that to the House floor and it will pass in the next 10 to 30 minutes. It will pass, and then we can open the government so people can get back to work. The Centers for Disease Control can get their people back out in the field. The National Institutes of Health will open once again. Head Start kids will be able to stay in their Head Start Programs. The Women, Infants, and Children feeding program will be able to get the necessary nutritious food for poor kids and kids who are homeless.

All Speaker Boehner has to do to end this is to bring that bill on the floor. He doesn't even have to vote for it. Congressman Boehner doesn't have to vote for it. Just throw it out, and I will bet that enough moderate Republicans and Democrats will vote to pass it. I challenge him to bring it out. Let's see what happens. That is the way to end this debacle right now.

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

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

Mr. President, I have been informed that I spoke incorrectly a few minutes ago when I said the credit union was closed. I guess one office is closed someplace, but another office is open and they will take calls. So I guess the office in the Hart Building is still open. I guess another office someplace else is closed. So I spoke incorrectly.

But I will continue to make this point: Isn't it a shame that our staffs, who work hard, have to go to a credit union to borrow money to get them through this period of time, to meet a mortgage payment or a car payment or whatever it is? We don't have to do that; we continue to get paid while we are here.

Again, in response to the remarks that, well, the sky hasn't fallen and the roof hasn't caved in, according to this Congressman from Iowa, for someone who now has to borrow money, even from a credit union--I belong to the credit union--for someone who has to borrow money from the credit union, it is just not right. This is simply not right and another reason why we have to call off this government shutdown, which, as I said, we could do in the next few minutes if Mr. Boehner would just put on the floor the continuing resolution he has over there and let his people vote on it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.