Government Shutdown
Floor Speech
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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I wish I could say I was rising today to just debate some of the normal issues we talk about. Like most of my colleagues, probably, I rise today a bit embarrassed--not a bit but really embarrassed that we are here under these circumstances.
People across Virginia cannot understand why we can't get this done. I had the honor of serving as the Governor of Virginia. I am a Democrat, and I had a two-to-one Republican legislature. We got things done. We compromised. We found that common ground that now seems to be viewed as a bad place to be.
Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Indiana that whatever number we agree on today, that doesn't take us very far when you have a $1.6 trillion deficit and a $14 trillion debt. If this debate is showing anything, it is that there is not going to be a way to get there unless we can frame this in a bipartisan way. I agree with the Senator from Indiana that we ought to take the framework of the Simpson-Bowles plan and put it forward. There are a group of Democrats and Republicans who are trying to do that, and a lot of other Members would like to be part of that as well.
We ought to take one lesson from this debate--that we are not going to solve the bigger problem unless we can start on a bipartisan basis. We have heard this morning back-and-forth about what is holding this up. I am not in the negotiating room. I wish I were. I don't know what is holding it up. I know, as somebody who has followed this debate pretty closely, that for the weeks of this discussion, it seems to have been focused on, can we at least take some small step toward attacking that deficit and cutting spending.
It seems to me from every bit of the press reports I have read--I would like to say I have an insider's view, and many of the Senators are trying to figure out what is going on, but from all the press reports, it seems that, until the last day or two, this has been about cuts, and there has actually been agreement on the number and size of this first step of cuts. But now we have these other issues. I think, as some of my colleagues have said, there will be time to debate those issues, but why in the heck would we roll the dice with not just 800,000 Federal employees but millions of Americans who rely on some level of continuity to have these extra social issue divisions right now?
I heard some of my colleagues say earlier that, well, we have to shut it down for a weekend, and that won't be too much of a problem. Well, you don't have to worry about the Federal employees.
Lord knows, anybody who puts a red herring--I appreciate Senators HUTCHISON and CASEY making sure our troops are going to get paid. I am proud of that. Regardless, I think Senators and Congressmen should not be paid, either, if we shut down, and I promise not to take any salary if we are shut down. But just even for a weekend, what do you tell the motel owners, the restaurant workers, the private sector folks who are relying this weekend on people coming to Washington to see the cherry blossoms? You may say that is small ball, but that is people's lives--not Federal workers but the private sector workers. What about the defense contractor who says that if we shut this down, he is going to lay off 70 folks starting next week? What about the shipbuilder in Norfolk who is living paycheck to paycheck and says they don't know whether they are going to see private sector dollars from their private sector employment, whether they are going to get paid or not? What do you say to our soldiers who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to try to spread democratic government if the greatest democracy in the world is going to shut down not over trillions of dollars' worth of differences but over some issue that may or may not have been introduced at the eleventh hour? I don't get it.
The notion somehow that this will send a good signal of fiscal discipline--I am proud, as my friend the Senator from Tennessee said, that we have spent more time in business careers than we have in our political lives. But what business hates the most is uncertainty. The markets hate uncertainty the most.
Portugal, yesterday or the day before, said they need a bailout from the European Central Bank. The notion that we are out of the woods in terms of a macrofinancial crisis is not true. The situation in Europe is very uncertain. The situation in the Middle East is obviously very uncertain. It would be the height of irresponsibility if we were to kind of once again rock the bond markets with the fact that the American Government would shut down over some extraneous issue. I don't get it.
The economists whom we have talked to have said that you can see up to a .2 percent decline in economic growth if we even shut down for a few hours. Frankly, it would end up costing us more than we save because shutting down operations and starting up operations, as any business leader or any government person who actually runs something knows, costs more money. People may say two-tenths of 1 percent, and we struggle for half a percent of growth here and there with all of these policies we try to promote--that is billions and hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy.
Just as we started to see a little bit of good news with the job numbers last month, just as we started to see the beginnings of an economic recovery, are we going to show that we can't even continue to operate the government for the next 6 months, and are we going to shut it down, at least based on press reports, on extraneous issues that don't have to do with deficit reduction?
If we can't get through this challenge, what happens when we move from the small-ball issues to the issues Senator Coats and my colleagues and friends, Senators CARPER and CORKER, all want to be part of--and the Presiding Officer--and how will we take on that $14 trillion debt, to which we add $4 billion every day that we fail to act, if we can't solve this problem in a way that focuses on making the cuts and letting the government continue to operate, not simply for the sake of 800,000 Federal workers but for countless millions in the private sector who depend upon that certainty, and move on to the question of how we find, I believe, the bipartisan solution that I hope and pray is at least around the framework of the Simpson-Bowles approach, which puts everything on the table--revenues and cuts--and recognize that we need to put the country back on the path of economic prosperity.
I hope the negotiators realize this is bigger than the small issues--bigger than 73, 78, or whatever number they finally determine. We will send a signal by our actions today whether we are willing to then move forward to take on the much bigger issue, which is where we have to start.
I will close with this. If there is anything we have learned from this effort, it is that if we start with guns ablazing at each other, we are not going to be able to take on the real issue that confronts us--the national security crisis that Chairman Mullen has said is the single biggest threat to our long-term economic stability based upon the rising debt.
I yield the floor and hope and pray we will come to a solution.
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