Continuing Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to call for an end to the senseless government shutdown and urge Members of the House to set aside political games for the betterment of the country.

The American people are tired of our country being held hostage and our economic recovery threatened just to score political points, and justifiably so. There are real consequences for this irresponsibility.

Shutting down the government for 3 or 4 weeks would reduce real gross domestic product by 1.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter alone, and a shutdown longer than 2 months would likely precipitate another recession.

But my colleagues don't have to take my word for it. Here is what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a letter on this very topic: ..... ``it is not in the best interests of the U.S. business community or the American people to risk even a brief government shutdown that might trigger disruptive consequences or raise new policy uncertainties washing over the U.S. economy.''

David Cote, the chief executive officer of Honeywell, stated that if you want to create economic disruption and uncertainty for businesses, then a government shutdown is a great way to do it.

I couldn't agree more.

The truth is we simply can't afford another self-inflicted wound to our economy, especially not at a time when things are finally turning around. We had big news in our State this month. The unemployment rate is down to 5.1 percent. National unemployment is at 7.3 percent. That is the lowest point since December of 2008. The housing market is bouncing back with existing home sales reaching a 6 1/2 year high in August. Retail sales are up, and so far this year we have added 1.5 million private sector jobs. We are not where we need to be, but we are moving in the right direction and it is clear that now is not the time to take a step back. Yet here we are again, right in the middle of another manufactured crisis.

On Friday, the Senate passed a bill to keep the government running that is free of any ideological policy provisions. The Senate bill would fund the government at the same level as last year through November 15 and would give Congress and the President time to negotiate a balanced deficit reduction plan.

The commonsense next step would be for the House to take up and pass the Senate's bill. That is democracy. They should put the bill before the House and, by most beliefs, it would pass and it would end the shutdown. Instead, the House has sent us four separate versions of the legislation with full knowledge that the Senate would not agree to them and the President stating he would veto them. Each of the House proposals would have delayed implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

So here we stand with the Federal Government shut down just so the House
Republicans could again attempt to relitigate a law that both the House and the Senate passed, the President signed, and the Supreme Court upheld.

That doesn't mean there will be no changes to the law going forward. I know the Presiding Officer, the Senator from the great State of West Virginia, has some ideas and I have some ideas, but they must be made in a rational manner, not as part of poison pill partisanship.

House Republicans don't seem to understand or they choose not to care about the negative impact on businesses and families that a government shutdown would have. Here are some examples of how my State will be impacted, and I know the Senator from Delaware, Mr. Coons, is here, and I know he has some examples as well. This is the story in Minnesota: According to the Small Business Administration, in 2012 their loan programs approved 53,847 applications and supported 571,383 jobs for an average of just over 1,000 applications per week. What does this mean for Minnesota? Well, my State is home to 115,000 small businesses, and I wish to ensure that the SBA loans keep coming through.

All lands managed by the National Park Service in Minnesota would be closed. They are closed. These include Voyageurs National Park, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, the North Country National Scenic Trail, the Pipestone National Monument, and the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway. Closure of the parks would result in the loss of tourism revenue. Last year, more than 600,000 visitors enjoyed these parks, an average of more than 1,600 visitors per day. According to the National Park Service in 2011, visits to these parks in Minnesota contributed $37 million in economic benefits and generated 665 jobs in my State.

In a State such as Minnesota, where tourism is our fifth largest industry and the source of 11 percent of our private sector revenue, we simply can't afford for this to happen. We simply cannot afford for this critical industry to be hamstrung by political posturing.

In the shutdown, the Food and Drug Administration will furlough 7,000 people, roughly 55 percent of the agency's workforce. That means the process for approving life-saving drugs and treatments and devices--something that matters a lot in my State--would grind to a halt, and shipments arriving at our ports from overseas will no longer be monitored by the FDA.

The shutdown also has the potential to slow down research at the Mayo Clinic. The bulk of Mayo's funding for research comes from the National Institutes of Health grants.

In the government shutdown, 70 percent of NIH staff is shut out, as Senator Mikulski has said on this floor many times, 70 percent of the National Institutes of Health staff. That represents about 19,000 American scientists, researchers, and others who are working to develop a cure for Alzheimer's, working to develop a cure for muscular dystrophy, working to develop a cure for autism.

Staff from the Mayo Clinic said if the government shuts down, the NIH will not be reviewing new grant proposals, and that is starting today.

In addition, it means funding for recently approved grant projects won't be released, and new patients will not be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center or allowed to begin new clinical trials.

We must also be willing to do the right thing for the safety of our people. That is, all in all, in my belief as a former prosecutor, the No. 1 duty of government--to keep our people safe. When it comes to homeland security, counterterrorism, and Federal law enforcement, rest assured those protections will continue, but in the event of a shutdown, the Federal officers who continue going to work protecting the public from violent crimes, gangs, and terrorists won't be getting a paycheck. Instead, they will be getting an IOU. So basically what we will be saying to these people, and what we are saying as of midnight last night, is: Thank you for putting your lives on the line but we can't pay you right now because there are some people in the House who want to delay the Affordable Health Care Act, and if you are lucky, maybe you will get backpay when all this is sorted out.

My colleagues in the House like to talk a big game about how uncertainty is hindering real economic growth. I believe uncertainty hinders economic growth. So it is quite ironic that they are now creating this economic uncertainty and are willing to threaten our economy on a political gamble.

Shutting down the government is not a negotiating tactic. If the House were to take up the Senate bill to fund the government, it is expected to pass and the shutdown would end. During that time, over the next 6 weeks, it will give us that time to truly negotiate a long-term debt deal done in a balanced way. Instead, critical services and the economic recovery are being threatened with poison pill partisanship.

To my colleagues in the House and in the Senate, I say this: Let's get this done. We owe it to the people we were elected to serve. We owe it to the country. Let's end this government shutdown now.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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