Effects of the Shutdown
Floor Speech
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank Ms. Pingree and Mr. Perlmutter for their leadership.
I welcome all questions from you guys and any other colleagues here, and from any Republicans present. Anybody who wants to pose a question to me, I am all for it.
Madam Speaker, Lara Trump, who is President Trump's daughter-in-law and re-election campaign adviser, recently had a message for the furloughed workers and people working without pay. It will all be worth it, she assures us. ``Listen, it's not fair to you, and we all get that; but this is so much bigger than any one person,'' she said in an interview with ``Bold TV''. ``It is a little bit of pain, but it's going to be for the future of our country.''
No, this is not a little bit of pain. A little bit of pain is losing your earring at the White House Christmas party. That is a little bit of pain.
This is a lot of pain that the American people are experiencing right now. It is day 34, and tens of thousands of my constituents are suffering because of the shutdown. Military veteran air traffic controllers in Frederick County are being forced to work with no pay, and having to borrow money from their kids' 529 college accounts, with a 10 percent penalty, in order to put food on the table and to pay their mortgage.
FDA workers living in Bethesda sent home from the job with no pay, when they are supposed to be keeping our food supply safe from E. coli, salmonella and insect infestation.
Dozens of scientists, researchers, secretaries, technicians, park rangers, IT workers, all thrust into a nightmare of closed offices, closed daycare, no gross pay, no net pay, and a suffering economy.
There are thousands of private contract employees in my district, Madam Speaker, who have not earned a dollar in a month, and they are never going to get repaid for it.
There are Uber drivers telling me they are making one-third of what they usually make because our regional economy is depressed in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., because of the government shutdown. And we know that that is symptomatic of what is going on across the country, because more than 80 percent of Federal workers don't live in the national capital region.
One of my constituents has been a Federal employee for 27 years, first in the Interior Department, and then in the National Park Service, who says: ``This is the first time that I've had to question whether I made the right choice in public service, and the first time I've had to reach into my retirement funds to make sure that my wife and I can pay our bills as they come due this week and next.''
He describes fellow Park Service employees living lives of quiet desperation. And of course they would be, because they are being maligned and typecast by the President of the United States, who derides all of the Federal workers as Democrats. He says they're all Democrats.
Well, first of all, it is not true. But what difference does it make? They are Americans.
We used to have Presidents of the United States who stood with all Americans, not with those from a particular political party, not just with those who agreed with the President or showed blind loyalty to the President. We used to have Presidents who were loyal to the American people and to our Constitution.
``All are suffering,'' my constituent writes, ``mostly silently, not looking for pity, but just for Congress and the White House to do their job.''
Now, we might think this shutdown is some kind of freak outburst by an admittedly erratic and impetuous President. But, Madam Speaker, I represent tens of thousands of Federal workers, and I am afraid that there is a method to this madness, and I know what it is; because I was there in January 2017 when the President issued an executive order freezing all Federal hiring, demoralizing, and even crippling agencies throughout our government.
I was there when they adopted, in January of 2017, the Holman Rule, giving Congress the power to reduce Federal workers' salaries, and even abolish their positions, simply by slipping riders into appropriations bills.
I watched them try to ban the use of the words ``climate change'' by Federal scientists in official documents. And I saw them propose hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Federal workers' wages and health benefits.
I saw the President, in September of last year, announce his decision to rescind modest, across-the-board, statutory pay increases and locality pay increases of 1.9 percent for the Federal workforce. And I have watched them try to bust the Federal worker unions by making it easier to fire Federal employees and trying to undo the existing collective bargaining contracts, a series of moves that were fought by the AFGE and NTEU and were finally reversed in court.
Madam Speaker, the original political philosopher of this administration, Steve Bannon, told us very clearly what was the principal and overriding political aim of this administration when he essentially declared war on our government and its workforce.
He stated at the outset of the administration that the new administration is in an unending battle for a deconstruction of the administrative state. ``Every day it is going to be a fight,'' he said. And by the administrative state, he means my constituents, who are working to protect our air, protect our water, protect our planet and the climate at the EPA, at NOAA, and throughout the Federal Government.
He means the civil servants at the Department of Justice who are prosecuting mobsters and white collar criminals; the IRS agents who are trying to catch tax scofflaws and collect money so we have a government.
He means the people at NOAA who are trying to save us from the horrors of ocean acidification, the collapse of the glaciers, and the cataclysmic weather events that have overtaken us in the age of global warming.
He means the hardworking scientists and researchers at the NIH who are working to cure colon cancer and breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, and multiple sclerosis, and even malignant narcissistic personality disorder.
Madam Speaker, does America recognize what is happening to us? We have a President who has essentially declared war on our own government, on our own civil servants. This is a complete betrayal of the oath of office. He is sworn to uphold and defend the law, not to frustrate and thwart it.
The first paragraph of the Constitution creates a covenant to form a more perfect union, but the President has given us the longest shutdown in American history. He is driving a wedge through the union.
To establish justice. But they have defunded the Department of Justice.
To ensure domestic tranquility, but the Department of Homeland Security is not being funded and our Border Patrol agents are being forced to work with no pay.
To provide for the common defense, but our Coast Guard officers have been held hostage, along with the rest of the Federal workforce.
To promote the general welfare, but 800,000 Federal workers are being forced to work with no pay, or sent home from jobs that the American people desperately want them to do.
And to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, but, instead, we are now threatening to bequeath to our children a dysfunctional government, degraded regulatory capacity to clean our air and water, a chaotic and unequal economy, and a comprehensive climate disaster.
And who wins? Who benefits? Who profits from it?
Well, we know it is not the American people. The overwhelming number of American people in every poll says open up the government right now. Put the Federal workers back to work.
And it is not the Federal workforce, which has been put through hell over the last month. It is not the business community, which is suffering. It is none of us who are benefiting, because the whole economy is hurting.
But Donald Trump has a profound admiration for autocrats and kleptocrats, tyrants and dictators all over the world. Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, the homicidal Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. All of these are the heroes of the President, and it must be a delicious sight for them to see as the President dismantles the government of our own country.
They don't shut down the government in Russia. They are not shutting down the government in Hungary. They are not shutting down the government in the Philippines, but he has shut down our own government.
Who wins? Who benefits from this outrageous and scandalous offense against America?
Well, it is not a partisan issue. I think the American people are increasingly unified every day against this horror.
And now we had the first great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who unified America by working to save the Union and defend the government.
And now we have got a Republican President who is driving a wedge through the Union, and has closed the government down. Will that be his legacy? Will this disgraceful offense against our Constitution and government be the legacy of this President? Or will, somehow, someone get to the President and tell him that our people are hurting? It is not a little bit of pain.
And I know they can't understand why Federal workers are going to food banks. Then they should come on out to the food banks. I invite them to come join me at the food banks in my district where I have been going. You will meet lots of Federal workers and their families there, because in this economy there are a lot of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, and tomorrow, that is two paychecks that people have missed, and they have missed them in the course of not doing the jobs that America needs them to do.
Madam Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Pingree for yielding this time, and I just urge all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the President to please let America get back to work, and to open the government immediately.
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