Whac-A-Mole

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) very much. And thank you for pointing out the foolishness, the nonsense, and even the hypocrisy of what's going on here.

My colleague Mike Thompson, with whom I share a good portion of northern California, very eloquently pointed out a real problem. When the duck hunters can't hunt, we've got a problem. Opening day, how many days to opening day? Zero. It was supposed to open today. Mr. Thompson pointed out that the refuges are closed up in the northern part of the State of California.

How about elk hunters? Elk hunters out there, opening day, today. The refuges are closed, and a good portion of the Federal forests also are unavailable.

Let's see, pronghorn hunting in northern California and southern Oregon was supposed to start today. Not on the refuges. They're closed.

Well, if you are a fisherman and you want to fish in the refuges, don't go today. They're closed. And, of course, the hunters. I think I'll just leave this one up here. These are folks that really get agitated. They have every reason to be agitated. This is nonsense.

I really wanted to take a few moments to explain to the American public what is actually happening here. We came up on this shutdown presumably because we couldn't agree to a budget. The House of Representatives passed a budget in March. The Senate passed one in late March, early April. The Senate asked for a conference committee. They appointed conferees. And Speaker Boehner, until 2 days ago, refused to appoint conferees. It was only after the government shut down that he relented and appointed conferees, after the blowup.

And so you want to go to conference? Why didn't you go to conference in April, May, June, July, August, even early September? Why, Mr. Speaker, didn't you appoint conferees when we had the time to negotiate? Why did you wait until after hunters couldn't go to the refuges? I don't understand.

Oh, but you have a solution. The Speaker has a solution. We will open up individual parts of the government based upon what the gentleman from Oregon

(Mr. DeFazio) calls ``the whack-a-mole theory of government.'' When something really embarrassing happens, we'll find a solution, says the Speaker. Wow, how brilliant.

And so what did we do? Oh, we'll open some of the national monuments--not all of them. We're not going to open the fish and wildlife refuges so that the hunters can hunt. But we'll open the World War II Memorial, and maybe we'll open up some of the Smithsonian facilities here in Washington.

Oh, but there's a problem. That's got to go through the Senate. And that's got to have the Presidential signature. And that's not going to happen.

So what's going on here? What's happening? The American public says, What are you guys doing? Well, we're not doing our job. Mr. Speaker, you're not letting us do our job.

We actually have a solution. It's called a continuing resolution, a CR. And that's not a medical procedure. A continuing resolution is actually a process that's been used over 110 times since the first day of President Clinton's--yes, I said that--President Clinton, back in 1993, 110 times we've used continuing resolutions to get passed these unnegotiable periods.

But this time, they added a little deal to it. There will be a continuing resolution when you repeal the Affordable Care Act, when you delay it, when you repeal part of it, when you change it. That hadn't been done in the past. But here we are.

So where are we now with the whack-a-mole theory?

Do you know what these are? Does the American public know what these are? These are 11 of the appropriation bills. Each one is very lengthy. There are more than 500 to 1,000 different items in each one of the appropriation bills, funding individual parts of government, one item at a time.

It's a big government. It's a multitrillion-dollar government. And it does a lot of good things, like, funds refuges so that people can go hunting, so that people can fish, so that there are national parks, camping grounds. At the national forests all across this Nation, camping grounds are shut down. Nobody's camping there this weekend.

These are the appropriation bills. Probably 5,000 or more individual items. In what has got to be one of the most foolish, nonsensical, and stupid actions, we're going to fund the government one item at a time. Yes. Hello, America. This is the Republican solution to the shutdown. We're going to fund the American Government one item at a time.

Let's see, this is day four of the shutdown. Okay. And to date, we have funded four specific parts of the American Government--oh, excuse me. I'm wrong. The House of Representatives has voted to fund four of the thousands of different parts of the American Government, four of them. Let me see, at this rate, it will probably be 2020 before the American Government is up and operating. How stupid is that when we have a solution available to us, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, listen. We have a solution available to us. It's called a continuing resolution. It's passed the Senate. It doesn't have all of the things you may want--like terminating the Affordable Care Act, which is, in effect, modifying it, defunding it, and God knows what else you may want. It's just what is known as a clean continuing resolution that funds all of government--not one item at a time, but all of government. And at what level? At the same level that it has been funded for the last 12 months. Not more funding, not less funding, but a whole lot less funding than what I think is necessary. But nonetheless, it continues the funding of government at the same level as the last 12 months for the next month and a half. And then we go through all this again with another manufactured crisis.

I wonder what the hunters are thinking of us. Mr. Speaker, these men and women want to go hunting. These men and women want to go fishing, camping. They want to go to the national parks. They want to recreate. They want America operating.

Mr. Speaker, please, please end this foolishness. Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, and he said, ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' Mr. Speaker, open up this government. Open up this government. You have the power. All you need to do is to bring to the floor a continuing resolution to fund the government at the very same level that it's been funded for the last 12 months, continue on for another 6 weeks so that we can establish what apparently you want, a conference committee, and negotiate, as we should do all the time, negotiate a resolution to this manufactured, unnecessary, stupid, dysfunctional crisis.

Mr. Speaker, open up this government.

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