Providing for Considerations of the Senate Amendment to Continuing Appropriations Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, a simple question: Why is the Speaker of this House denying this House the opportunity to have an ``up-or-down'' vote on a clean continuing resolution to keep the Federal Government operating tomorrow and beyond? Why is he not allowing a vote? Why is he not allowing Democrats and Republicans together to have a vote on keeping the government open?

Because, Mr. Speaker, if he had that vote, it would pass. It would pass on a bipartisan basis and the government would still be operating. So, apparently, the Speaker is afraid that we would actually pass a bill to keep the government going.

So why is he not allowing the people's House to do the people's business? Well, we've been seeing this playing out around the country in the last couple of weeks. You've got a far-right extreme Tea Party element in the Republican Party that is dictating what's happening here on the floor of this House. Senator Cruz is running the show on the floor of this House. Mr. Speaker, why don't you just quicken it up and pass Senator Cruz the gavel and let him run the House?

Now why is it that this group of Members wants to shut down the government? Because tomorrow, millions of Americans are going to get access to affordable health care. Millions of Americans are already benefiting from the protections of the Affordable Care Act. But tomorrow, millions more will get access to affordable care.

Republicans are so bent--at least this Tea Party faction--on blocking that from happening and preventing those millions of Americans from getting access to affordable care, they're prepared to shut down this government. That is a scandal.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mrs. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. The other thing that's really puzzling is while our Republican colleagues want to shut down the government to prevent the American people from getting access to the benefits of the Affordable Care Act and access to the exchange, where you have a marketplace of different plans being offered and a little help for those who are stretched thin and can't afford it, while our Republican colleagues want to shut down that part and other important parts of the Affordable Care Act, guess what the Republicans kept in their own budget? They kept the Medicare savings. I remember Mitt Romney and the Vice Presidential candidate saying how those were going to be the ruin of the country.

Well, guess what? In the Republican-passed budget that virtually every Republican Member of this House voted for, they kept those savings. And guess what else they kept? They kept the same level of revenue that would be generated by ObamaCare. Just check the Heritage Foundation statement. Every penny of revenue from ObamaCare, that level of funding is assumed in the Republican budget.

So here we have Republicans running around the country saying they've got a balanced budget, which is balanced because of ObamaCare, and now they're here saying they want to defund ObamaCare. You just can't have it both ways.

Don't shut down the government. Let's pass the bill that came out of the Senate, send it to the President, and get it done tonight.

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