National Park Service Operations, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of this important legislation to fund the operation of the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and the National Gallery of Art.

The effects of the government shutdown, which began at midnight last night, are already being felt across the country and in our Nation's Capital. As of this morning, all 401 National Park Service units in the United States, 19 Smithsonian museums and galleries, including the National Zoo, the Holocaust Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, were closed to the public. This legislation, if adopted, would reopen these national treasures to the American public.

Mr. Speaker, the American people woke up this morning to the headlines that read: ``The Capital of the Free World: Closed Until Further Notice.'' It's no surprise that the government shutdown has had an impact on real people and on the economy. On our National Mall, tourists yesterday raced from one museum to another, trying to see as many sights as they could with the government shutdown looming.

It is estimated that the local economy could lose up to $200 million a day with the National Zoo, the Smithsonian museums, the Holocaust Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and other popular attractions closed to the public. This doesn't even begin to measure the national and international impact of these closures.

In the case of the National Park Service, 21,379 employees across the country were furloughed today. This has an impact on real people. Families who long ago made plans to visit Yosemite or Yellowstone or the Statue of Liberty found these sites and others shuttered today. This has an impact on real people. I heard on the news about a group of World War II veterans who arrived at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., today and found that the site had been barricaded. That didn't stop them from entering the memorial built to honor their sacrifice.

Mr. Speaker, this is a commonsense bill, and I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SIMPSON. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to just respond. The gentleman from Virginia is correct in that this is no way to run the government.

I would remind the gentleman from Virginia that we did pass resolution after resolution, and we sent them to the Senate to keep the government operating. Unfortunately, they were rejected by the body on the other side. Now, I suspect that you might have a different take on why that was done. So, finally, we said let's go to conference to try to work out our differences. No, they wouldn't even do that. They rejected that.

So is it fair to punish those people who have planned for months, sometimes years, to bring their families to Washington, D.C.? They've saved. They've put aside money so that they could come out here to show the American people our National Capital or to go to the Yellowstone National Park or Yosemite. Is it fair to punish them? This opens them and keeps them open for those people so that they can enjoy those natural things that you and I both love. There is absolutely no reason to punish them.

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Mr. SIMPSON. You say we could reopen the government, yes, if we put the Senate CR on the floor. We could also open it if the Senate would bring up the House CR and pass it. So there are different ways to address this.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to remind the gentlelady, my friend from California, that there is a process. And it's called, when the House and the Senate disagree on something, they ask for a conference. And they go to conference and they try to work that out.

But my good friends on the other side of the rotunda chose to say, No, we don't even want to talk about it. We don't care what you want. We don't want to talk about it. And so they were unwilling to go to conference to discuss it.

The other thing I would notice--I don't know that it is beneath the dignity of this House to make sure that when the World War II veterans--who are scheduled to come here tomorrow to fly the colors and celebrate at the World War II Memorial but are presently barricaded out--to make sure that that memorial is open so that they can enjoy it. I don't know that that is beneath the dignity of this House. That is all this bill is trying to do.

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Mr. SIMPSON. Reclaiming my time, as I mentioned, this is not the way to run the government, absolutely not the way to run the government. Everyone on this side of the aisle agrees with that.

But the fact is we have a difference between the House and the Senate. And what do you do when you have a difference between the House and the Senate?

Should it have been done 2 months ago?

Sure. It wasn't. We are where we are today, and now we need to sit down and work out the differences between the House and the Senate, and I suspect we have a difference of opinion of how we came to this point.

Mr. MORAN. I suspect we have an agreement that what we need to do is to pass a clean CR, and that fixes the whole problem so we don't have to do these little bills one after the other. That's what we need, a clean CR.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I would encourage all my Members to support this to keep our national parks open so that the families and their children can enjoy these national parks, and we will work on the rest of the government, trying to make sure that we get it open and get around this Democratic shutdown of the government.

Mr. Speaker, I urge this bill's passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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