Government Shutdown
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CASTRO of Texas. Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. And thank you for all of your work and for pointing out the many benefits of the Affordable Care Act, which, as many Americans know, took effect today.
There were so many people that were anxious and excited about getting health care coverage, about comparing prices to see if they might get a lower price for insurance that the Web site actually had glitches, it had problems. But that is a good thing. And in Texas, we know that problem very well. We're the State that has the highest percentage of people that don't have health care coverage at all.
Would you believe that one out of four Texans--25 percent of kids and 25 percent of adults--have no health care coverage at all. Thirty percent of women don't have health care coverage. Thirty-eight percent of Hispanics in Texas don't have health care coverage. And so the fact that the Affordable Care Act and the exchanges kicked off today is a great day for Texas and a great day for Americans.
But as we think about what's going on today--and today has been a very sad day in our country not only because this is the first time in 17 years that our U.S. Government has shut down but because of the way it happened. And I think that, you know, when people woke up today and they turned on the news or the radio or picked up the newspaper and they saw a government shutdown, the people who usually live their lives, work hard every day, sometimes don't have a lot of time to pay attention to politics, saw those headlines and thought, What are these guys up in Washington doing? What are they up to? And that played into all of the stereotypes about how bad Congress is, about how bad politicians are.
But let's think about how this happened. During the summer, there's a junior Senator from Texas, from my home State that barnstormed the Nation and our State, insisting that we defund what was derisively called ObamaCare, that we get rid of all of the patient protections and all of the great things that you have just described. And he, in fact, said that he would do everything in his power, everything in his power to make sure that that law was defunded.
Now you and I both know that you pass laws, you do budgets, and you also raise the debt ceiling limit, but that those are different things, that you don't hold one hostage to the other. But he insisted and got many of the Tea Party members in the House of Representatives--in fact, he had conference calls with them, had personal meetings with them. His folks were calling out the Speaker of the House on Twitter and on Facebook, when the Speaker thought about being reasonable, passing a clean CR so that we could go about the Nation's business.
And it became clear that this was playing into a pattern that has developed with Republicans since 2010, since the increase in Tea Party Republican members. This is the pattern. Think about the sequester. That came about in 2011 through the Budget Control Act. It mostly came about because there was a lot of pressure by Tea Party Republicans to cut in every single corner of government. And so we got a bad law, the sequester, which I think most people acknowledge now is bad.
But if you will remember, Congressman, when that happened, these Republicans who for years, for years have been staking their careers on cutting government, all of a sudden magically were running away from the fact that they did it, were acting like, Wow, that was never our idea. It was the President who wanted sequester. It was the Democrats who insisted on sequester. When, in fact, for years and years and even more intensely since 2010, they have been demanding that we cut government no matter what. But when it happened, many of them wouldn't claim it. They say, That wasn't us.
Well, let's fast forward now 2 years. The same thing happens with a government shutdown. So the government shuts down as they wanted. And what happens the next morning? Folks come to the floor. They do interviews on television. They give quotes in the newspaper saying, It wasn't us. We've been saying this the whole time, but it wasn't us. It was the Democrats that did it.
Look, if you're going to advocate for something, if you're going to push for something, then you need to own it, and you need to accept it.
Now I will say, if you look at a lot of the social media sites for Republicans, a lot of those Tea Party supporters are very honest about what they want. I had a chance to read through many of them yesterday. And they said, Shut it down. Shut the government down.
Now, look, there may be a small percentage of Americans who feel that way, who are so frustrated with government, who are so frustrated with American society that they do, in fact, want to shut America down. But the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats know that that's a horrendous thing.
So what we have today are some errant comments by folks who slipped up politically and said, Yes, we're happy about shutting this thing down. But then you have another group of folks who, even though they voted in lockstep with Senator Cruz and the Tea Party Republicans, now try to cast aspersions on the folks who tried to stop it, the Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you advocated for it for years, if this was your strategy, then when it happens, you take responsibility for the results.
Now there's also been a little bit of debate about, well, how do you handle this situation? We know, as I said, that you don't hold the budget hostage to policy. In other words, you don't try to change policy through the budget. We understand that.
So just to crystallize that, I would ask my colleagues, if you think it's okay to not raise the debt ceiling limit or approve a budget because you disagree with public policy, a law that was passed 3 years ago,
then I would ask you, should we not approve a budget, as Democrats? Or should we not raise the debt ceiling limit because we believe that there should be a comprehensive immigration reform plan with a path to citizenship?
Now bear in mind, these guys are saying that the Affordable Care Act is upside down in its numbers. In other words, there are probably about 53 percent of Americans saying, quite frankly, that they don't like it right now. More and more are liking it. But they're right on those numbers.
Well, 60 percent of Americans say they want comprehensive immigration reform. Ninety percent of Americans said they wanted background checks. Should we hold out and say, We're not going to raise the debt ceiling limit unless we get universal background checks or we get comprehensive immigration reform? Of course not. And Democrats have acted responsibly. There's a reason that we've not done that. Because we respect this democracy. We respect the Nation. And we're honest with the Nation.
So I hope that as cooler heads prevail that we'll be able to resolve this, that we'll be able to pass a clean CR, and that we will be able to do the people's business in a respectful and honest way.
Thank you, Congressman, very much for the time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source