Continuing Appropriations

Floor Speech

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, in Vermont and all across this country there is huge frustration with what is going on in Washington. It is clear to me that with the middle class of this country disappearing, with millions of Americans working longer hours for lower wages, with poverty today at an alltime high in terms of the number of people living in poverty, with young people graduating college deeply in debt and others not having the resources to go to college, with real unemployment at close to 14 percent, youth unemployment higher than that, minority unemployment very high, an infrastructure that is collapsing, with the IPCC, the scientists all over the world who are studying global warming and telling us we have a planetary crisis that must be addressed by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, what people are seeing is that we have all these problems affecting them, their kids, and the planet, and in the Congress we cannot even get a budget passed.

People are angry in Vermont and across the country and they are frustrated. I know many people are saying a plague on everybody; you people are all terrible.

I just hope we can go a little bit beyond that and try to understand, in fact, what is happening and what the cause of this terrible government shutdown is and why 800,000 decent people who happen to work for the Federal Government are not at work, are not earning a paycheck, and are scared to death about how they are going to provide for their families or take care of other basic needs.

How did it happen? I think, very simply, what we should understand is that the Senate passed a conservative budget--continuing resolution--until November 15. It was much lower than I had wanted. In fact, it is a Republican budget. It includes this terrible sequestration--something I strongly opposed--that was passed as a compromise gesture, and it was sent to the House.

Here is the most important point people need to understand in terms of what is going on in Congress: Right now, according to a very knowledgeable source, the House of Representatives has the votes to pass a clean continuing resolution, the bill that was passed in the Senate. They have the votes. It is not a question of the Speaker coming forward and saying: Gee, I just don't have the votes. They have the votes.

The political problem is that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has chosen to be the Speaker of the Republican Party, not of the whole House of Representatives. What is happening is he has 30 or 40 extreme rightwing people who are absolutely insistent that they want to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. The only way they will support any budget is if there is language in it that defunds ObamaCare.

The reason we cannot support that language is not just because ObamaCare was passed close to 4 years ago and signed by the President and it is the law of the land, it is not just because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional, it is not just because there was an election held last year in November in which this was perhaps the major issue and the President won reelection by 5 million votes--and in the Senate the Republicans lost two seats and in the House they lost some seats--the real reason we cannot accept that language is that we would begin to accept a terrible precedent.

What the precedent would be is that it doesn't matter what happens in an election. It doesn't matter what happens in terms of the normal legislative process of the Congress. What we would be saying is that a small group of people can blackmail the American people and hold the American people hostage unless they get their way.

If they are successful in succeeding in terms of what they want to do right now, I can absolutely guarantee that in 2 weeks, when this Congress and the White House are going to have to deal with the debt ceiling and the question of whether, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, we do not pay our bills, the money we owe, we could drive the American financial system and the world's financial system into what economists are describing as a catastrophic situation.

Nobody knows what will happen. It has never occurred before, that the largest economy in the world would say, We are deadbeats; we are not paying our bills. But some economists believe this could have a huge impact all over the world: financial chaos, significant shrinkage of GDPs all over the world--gross domestic products--more and more unemployment, at a moment when the world's financial system is already fragile.

People don't have to believe Bernie Sanders in saying that. Ironically, we have all of these guys on Wall Street--no friends of mine. We have the Chamber of Commerce and all the multizillion-dollar businesses, saying to the Republicans: Don't do it. Don't take us over the edge; it will have a catastrophic impact on the economy.

When we talk about what is going on here, I don't want people to take my word for it. I have a political position and people know what that is. But I want you to hear what some responsible Republicans are saying about the reckless actions taking place in the House. I am not going to read them all, but let me read just a few. These statements are what Republicans are saying about the House Republican attempt to attach ObamaCare to the budget resolution and bring the U.S. Government to a shutdown.

Saxby Chambliss, Republican Senator from the State of Georgia, who is no friend of ObamaCare, says:

I'd love to defund ObamaCare too, but shutting down the government and playing into the hands of the President politically is not the right thing to do. Plus, it is going to do great harm on the American people if we pursue that course. We have been there; it didn't work.

Dan Coats, Republican from Indiana, on the floor a moment ago:

Here's the hard truth. President Obama will not overturn his signature legislation so long as he is President and the Democrats have control of the Senate. Along with these political realities, refusing to pass legislation to keep the government funded will not stop ObamaCare from going into effect.

Representative Peter King, Republican from New York, in the House:

We should not be closing down the government under any circumstances. That doesn't work. It's wrong, and you know, ObamaCare care passed. We have to try to defund it. We have to try to find ways to repeal it, but the fact is we shouldn't be using it as a threat to shut down the government.

Many more Republicans are saying the same.

What we believe right now is that a significant majority in the House of Representatives today is prepared to end the shutdown if the Speaker will give them the opportunity.

Interestingly enough, while we have great discussions here about ObamaCare and many of my Republican friends come to the floor to say how terrible it is, the American people are today in a sense voicing their opinion on ObamaCare all over this country--in their homes and in their offices all across America. Nationally, more than 10 million Americans have gone onto the Web site healthcare.gov and other Web sites to look for affordable health insurance plans under ObamaCare or to receive more information--10 million Americans in a 2-day period.

The truth of the matter is 48 million Americans have no health insurance--something my Republican friends forget. Many of them are paying much more than they can afford for health insurance. So, yes, people want an opportunity to get insurance if they don't have it and they want an opportunity to get more affordable insurance if they can. So while these guys are talking about ending ObamaCare, millions and millions of people all across the country are trying to find out how they can get into the program, and these guys are saying, Well, we don't care what millions of people want; we are going to defund it.

I mentioned 10 million people have gone to the Federal Web site. In my small State of Vermont, more than 13,000 people have visited our Affordable Care Act Web site. California, if we can believe this--one State--has reported 5 million visits to its Affordable Care Act Web site. In Kentucky, more than 78,000 visitors have gone to its Affordable Care Act Web site. Importantly, Kentucky is the only State in the South that has chosen to participate fully in ObamaCare by both expanding Medicaid and operating a State-level health insurance exchange.

In New York State, almost 10 million people visited the Web site on the first day.

So, to nobody's surprise, if people don't have any health insurance, or if people today have health insurance they cannot afford, and they are given an opportunity to come into a program which provides them with some help, people are taking advantage of it.

As millions and millions of people are trying to figure out how they can get into the system, we have our Republican friends over in the House who are saying, No, we want to defund it; we don't want to give people that opportunity.

There is a Web site called nationofchange.org, a very good Web site. I wish to read some of the headlines they have assembled about how people are responding to the Affordable Care Act. In Connecticut: ``Health Care Plans Begin: 28,000-plus Go Online to State Marketplace.''

Georgia: ``Enrollment Sites Are Swamped On First Day,'' according to the Augusta Chronicle.

Idaho: ``Idaho Health Exchange Launches With Few Hiccups,'' Idaho Statesman.

Indiana: ``Insurance Marketplace Draws Strong Early Interest,'' from Journal and Courier.

Kentucky: ``Kynect Opens To High Demand,'' the Courier-Journal.

Maine: ``Insurance Marketplace Opens To Flood of Interest.''

Delaware: ``Off And Running In New Market: Website Overwhelmed On First Day Of Access.''

Michigan: ``Insurance Exchange Debut Draws Millions,'' the Detroit News.

New Mexico: ``ObamaCare: Plenty Of Interest, a Bevy Of Computer Snags.''

On and on and on.

Colorado: ``Heavy Traffic Slows Health Website On Debut Day.''

All across the country, to nobody's great surprise, people who have no health insurance are saying, Yes, we don't want to go throughout life worrying about whether we are going to go bankrupt or whether we are going to be able to go to a doctor, and they are trying to get more information about the Affordable Care Act, and they are signing up in huge numbers--higher than people had anticipated.

Our Republican friends in the House are saying, We don't care that on the first day 10 million people expressed interest in this legislation. We want to end it. We want to end it.

It passed. It is the law. Millions of people are signing up, gaining information. And they are saying, We will continue to shut down the U.S. Government, deny a paycheck to 800,000 American workers; we don't care what happens to them, unless we get our way. And right here in the Senate--and in the House--we have sensible Republicans who are

saying what is obvious: You don't have to agree with ObamaCare. I don't agree with ObamaCare. I think it needs to be improved. I believe in a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program. But at least ObamaCare is providing health insurance to some 20 million Americans today who do not have it.

I think it is important to make a point that is not being made often enough in terms of putting what is going on today with this shutdown in a broader context. Of course we can have an argument over ObamaCare. I don't think it is perfect; I want to see it improved. But where our extreme rightwing friends in the House are coming from is a lot more than trying to end ObamaCare. Everybody needs to understand this, and I think there is too little discussion on this issue. What we are looking at is a small group of people--these are tea party folks, rightwing extremist people--people who are funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers who are worth some $71 billion, and I want to tell my colleagues what their vision is for America, because this is not just about ObamaCare. It is a vision for America and what these guys want to accomplish. For them, I should say--and some of them have been quite public about it--shutting down the government is great. It is great because they don't believe in the concept of government.

I think one of the good sources we can use to get a clue as to where these rightwing extremists are coming from is the Texas Republican Party platform of 2010. I want to use that. I could use other sources, but Texas is a very large State. Texas is today controlled by very conservative Republicans. And the truth is that the party platform of Texas, of one State, ends up being the--the ideas in it end up being adopted more or less by Republicans here in the Congress and all over the country. What they say is--this is not some small fringe group. I am not finding some whacko group out there. This is the State of Texas Republican Party platform of 2012.

I want to be very clear in telling my colleagues what this platform they have is about. These are the ideas by and large that our rightwing extremist friends believe in. It is about a lot more than ObamaCare. This is what the 2012 Republican Party platform states:

We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.

Well, if we phase out the Social Security tax, we are ending Social Security. Goodbye, Social Security. In my view, Social Security is probably the most important program ever passed by this U.S. Government. Today, over 50 million people are in the Social Security system. Social Security has gone a very long way in lowering poverty for senior citizens. Before Social Security, it was close to 50 percent; now it is somewhere around 10 percent. We have a long way to go to get that number lower, but we have made real progress.

What they are saying is they want to eliminate Social Security funding, eliminate Social Security, and when they do that, I am not quite sure what happens to a working person when that person is 67, 68, 75 years of age. No Social Security. And for people who doubt me, go to the Texas Republican Party platform. I just read exactly their quote.

This is the other thing they want to do--and I speak now as the proud chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. We have oversight over what the Veterans' Administration is doing. Within the Veterans' Administration right now, we have about 152 VA hospitals, we have some 900 community-based outreach clinics, we have hundreds of vet centers. In my view, they are providing not perfect but pretty good health care for the veterans of America, some 6 million of whom are now within the VA health care system. It is something I believe we should expand. I think we should make VA health care available to every veteran in this country.

This is what the Texas Republican Party platform says:

We support the privatization of veteran's healthcare.

I am not quite sure what that means, but it means ending the VA system as we know it because the VA is a government-funded system. If you privatize it--you can do it in a million ways--but, most likely, it sounds to me as though you would give veterans a voucher, something similar to what the Republicans in the House wanted to do with Medicare. Give people a sum of money. Go out, find the doctor or hospital you need. I think that is a terrible idea for the veterans of this country. But, again, I quote the Texas Republican Party platform of 2012:

We support the privatization of veteran's healthcare.

Another plank in terms of what they want:

We support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution; including the Departments of Education and Energy.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SANDERS. Let me say this: This debate is a lot bigger than whether the Republicans are successful in shutting down the government because of their insistence that ObamaCare be defunded. This debate is about whether a minority of the people in the House of Representatives is able to blackmail and hold hostage the American people and the U.S. Congress and the President and say: If we do not get our way, we do not care what happens to 800,000 workers and the millions of people who depend on government services. We do not care. It is our way or the highway. And in 2 weeks, these same people, I assure you, will be saying: We do not care if there is an international financial collapse, maybe the loss of millions of jobs. We do not care unless we get our way.

To surrender to that approach would be a horrible precedent because I can guarantee you absolutely that if we move down that path of government, they will be back again and again, and maybe next year it is: We are going to shut down the government unless you abolish Social Security; we are going to shut down the government unless you end the concept of the minimum wage because we do not believe in the minimum wage.

I hope that Speaker Boehner becomes the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and not just for the Republican Party. Let the Members of the House vote. And if they do, I believe this government will be reopened within hours.

With that, I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source