Continuing Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for those eloquent and very powerful remarks, and I will take advantage of his presence here to perhaps engage in a colloquy, if he agrees to doing so, asking him, because he spoke so wonderfully about that one family, whether he has seen, as I have seen, that story of deprivation and setback duplicated on a bigger scale throughout our State?

Mr. MURPHY. I thank my colleague from Connecticut for the question. As he knows, there are a thousand different children in that one Head Start Program alone who have essentially lost access to childcare. This week I think the number is, as the Senator knows, about 18,000 kids across the country who will lose access to health care. As we have seen, it has already had a big effect in our State because we have so many defense manufacturers. Some of the initial furloughs to civilians have caused a loss of work among families who could not afford it. We are seeing over and over how this shutdown trickles down.

Frankly, it is affecting the very families who cannot afford to miss a paycheck, the very families who cannot make quick arrangements to find somebody else to take care of their autistic child. As the Senator has seen and knows, this is affecting, in our small State, thousands and thousands of residents who did not have a lot of wiggle room when it came to the support that was standing around them due to programs run by the Federal Government.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. In fact, I think statistics show more than a thousand children and their families are directly affected by this shutdown in Head Start alone. Seniors, in terms of nutritional assistance--I do not know whether my good friend and very distinguished colleague from Connecticut has seen that phenomenon as well in Bridgeport and throughout our State of Connecticut and would care to remark on it?

Mr. MURPHY. I would say to the Senator, we have had this effort on behalf of Republicans to kind of pick and choose which parts of the government they are going to reopen. As I noted here on the floor in objecting to one of these piecemeal requests, that exact program my colleague referred to, the senior nutrition program which provides meals to very low-income and often very frail seniors who are getting them either at a senior center or delivered to them through the Meals On Wheels Program, was not initially one of the programs that Republicans chose to reopen.

That is why we object to this piecemeal approach. It is bad policy to allow for a wing of this House or the other House to pick and choose which people they help, leaving on the outside, as the Senator mentioned, some who are very deserving, such as very frail and often very hungry senior citizens.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. What is needed, I think my colleague would agree, is an end to the shutdown, reopening government--not for the sake of reopening the government but to provide these vital services and assurance that the United States of America, the greatest Nation in the history of the world, is going to continue paying its debts. Then and only then have a conference and a compromise and collaboration on what our overall budget should be with smart spending cuts and increases in revenue that close some loopholes and subsidies. I think that was the thrust, was it not, of what my colleague from Connecticut had to say?

Mr. MURPHY. I think the majority leader made it very clear he is willing to sit down to talk about everything and anything the Republicans want to discuss but not with a gun to our heads. Let's reopen the government. Then, as we as a Chamber have been willing to do over and over, let's sit down in a budget conference with everything part of that budget on the table.

But this just cannot happen every time that one faction of one House does not get their way, they shut down the government until their particular demands are remediated.

As I was saying, Senator Blumenthal and I care deeply about the issue of background checks. He worked his entire life on this issue. But given his life's work, he is still not coming to this Chamber and demanding until he gets his way on that issue, which is of such vital importance to his constituents and mine, that he will shut down the government.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. In fact, what is happening is a small fraction of one House of the Congress--in fact, in the House of Representatives, one small group of rightwing extremists, whatever they may characterize themselves as--is holding hostage the entire House of Representatives, the entire Congress, the entire government, even though it is only one branch and one part of a branch. I think Senator Murphy has explained well our view--and our constituents in Connecticut need to know it--we are willing to compromise and collaborate but not with hostage-taking tactics that in effect say to everyone else in the country: It is our way or the highway.

I thank my colleague from Connecticut for speaking so clearly and persuasively on his topic, and for giving the impact of this government shutdown a human face and a human voice. The story he told from Bridgeport has indeed thousands of others just like it across the State of Connecticut, across the country, who are suffering the real hardship and harm of this shutdown.

We can talk in the abstract here. Our rhetoric may carry a little bit beyond these four walls. But the real-life consequences belong to them. Both Senator Murphy and I have seen them in real life and that is why we are here to advocate and fight for those people of Connecticut, in Bridgeport, those families who depend on Head Start, those seniors who depend on nutritional assistance--he

has told their story, and that of Sikorsky, so well today in this Chamber. These men and women, and their families, do great work for our Nation on their assembly lines.

Black Hawk helicopters are the best-made helicopters in the Nation. They perform rescue operations for our troops in Afghanistan. They medevac our Nation's warriors to places where they can be saved. They provide resupply and provisions. They are literally lifesaving vehicles in our war to keep America safe.

Those workers in Sikorsky were told late last week: You are done. You are furloughed. Do not report to work next week because 45 inspectors--civilian employees of the U.S. Department of Defense--are going to be furloughed. The 45 inspectors and 1,500 or 2,000 or more workers at Sikorsky who work on the Black Hawk helicopter assembly line, and other product assembly as well, were told they were going to be furloughed.

Senator Murphy and I, and other members of our delegation, spoke with officials of the Department of Defense. We made our interpretation of the recently passed law clear to them and told them that it applies to employees of the Defense Contract Management Agency whose services were vital to certify and inspect those helicopters. We needed to keep the assembly lines at Sikorsky open in order to make sure that Black Hawk helicopters were continuing to be available to our military men and women who depend on them so vitally.

Those conversations--and I am sure others had them as well--with officials at the Department of Defense, along with the action of the House over the weekend, will make sure that all of the furloughed employees who work for the U.S. Government will eventually be paid.

Secretary Hagel was persuaded to do the right thing. I commend and thank Secretary Hagel for bringing back those employees, such as the 45 DCMA inspectors, who have to be there for the Department of Defense in order to take delivery of those helicopters, which, in turn, is necessary to keep the assembly line open and keep Sikorsky workers employed and on the job with the countless other hard-working men and women defense contractors across the United States.

I thank Secretary Hagel, but at the same time we need to recognize that for every Sikorsky helicopter situation, for every Fortune 500 corporation, and for every one of those big defense contractors, there are literally thousands of suppliers and small businesses that are continuing in uncertainty, and sometimes confusion, about what is happening here in Washington.

There are thousands of other businesses that depend on those suppliers because they provide the raw materials for the parts for the Sikorsky helicopters. The ripple effect and the ramifications pervade our economy and our society. The uncertainty creates harm and hardship that is immeasurable and perhaps irreparable.

The harm is not only to those workers who rightly have whiplash from being furloughed one day and being called back another and then being uncertain as to what impact this shutdown will ultimately have; there are suppliers and the countless other small businesses that cannot plan, cannot look ahead, cannot hire for the future, and sometimes they have to tell their workers: You are going to be furloughed. You cannot plan to buy a car or a new home or even the most minor things such as school supplies--or make other plans, for that matter.

Lives hang in the balance; lives are at stake. The real-life consequences are real and perhaps lasting for many Americans--not only the family who depends on Head Start or the senior nutrition assistance or the jobs in Sikorsky, but there are countless others whose lives also hang in the balance.

There is a solution to this impasse. Calmer minds, cooler heads, and common sense are beginning to reach a consensus that the House should be given a chance to vote, and that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, should enable that vote. He should very simply provide an opportunity to Republicans and Democrats--not singling out one side or the other--to come together on a bipartisan basis.

Who cares who is in the minority of that vote as long as it reopens the government and provides Head Start, nutritional assistance, and enables some certainty that permits our economy to move forward rationally and sensibly so we can recover from the great recession? We need to grow jobs and enable the economy to reach some measure of prosperity. We all have an interest in that outcome. We should all be pulling for America. We should all be assured that the greatest nation in the history of the world will leave no doubt that it will pay its bills on time and that it will fulfill its obligations on time, just as we have for every year in the history of this great Nation.

There is a way to come together. I have heard from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that the time has come to end this impasse. Simply let the House vote.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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