We Need Leadership, Not the Blame Game

Floor Speech

Mr. BERA of California. Mr. Speaker, day No. 3--day No. 3--of a government shutdown that doesn't need to happen.

Mr. Speaker, we need leadership, we don't need the blame game, and yet that is what we are seeing. Republicans blaming Democrats, Democrats blaming Republicans, the House blaming the Senate, the Senate blaming the House, and the House blaming the President.

That isn't getting us anywhere. And to the American people, they're not saying: Oh, it's the Democrats' fault or it's the Republicans' fault. They're looking at Congress and saying: Why can't you do your job? Why can't you come together as Democrats and Republicans, bring your best ideas forward and compromise and negotiate?

What this House is doing, what Congress is doing, is reckless. It's irresponsible. We need to start putting the American people's interests first because they're the ones that we work for. That's who sent us here.

We're not asking anyone to give up their convictions. We all have our convictions, and we all have our districts and the people back home. What we're asking for, the Members in this body, the Republicans and the Democrats, is to think about the country. Now is the time for us to put the American people first. That means we've got to be able to come forward and understand and learn how to listen. It's hurting real people.

I'm a doctor by training, and I look at this from the perspective of being a doctor and the American patients. As reported in my hometown newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, at my hometown hospital where I'm still a clinical professor, UC Davis Medical Center, here is what they said:

For cancer patients, government help--in the form of clinical trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute--can be a matter of life and death. And the NCI, a Federal agency, has closed its doors for the duration.

One of my colleagues, Dr. David Gandara, a UC Davis Cancer Center lung cancer specialist, said this:

We have California patients from our center who have been going through clinical trials there and have been told to go home. The program has been shut down.

Now, I know yesterday you brought a bill to the floor, a resolution that restored partial funding to the NIH for 3 months, through December. But as a doctor, cancer patients are not looking at 3 months. They need some certainty. We need some certainty in the practice of medicine when we're sitting with our patients. So I implore this body to come together as Democrats and Republicans to think about those patients and to think about those Americans who are being hurt by our inability to do our job.

Now, as a Democrat, I'm going to continue talking to my Republican colleagues and looking at ways that we can move forward, but inflammatory rhetoric and the blame game is not going to get us anywhere. We've got to learn how to listen to one another, we've got to learn how to speak to one another, and we've got to learn how to put the American people ahead of political parties. That's who we work for.

The oath I took as a doctor is borne on a foundation of two solid principles: benevolence, to do good; nonmalfeasance, to do no harm.

Mr. Speaker, Congress' inability to get the job done is doing irreparable harm to Americans and to American patients, and we certainly are not doing any good by not getting a budget put together and getting America back on track. Let's do our job. Let's do what the American people sent us here to do. Let's work together as Republicans and Democrats and learn how to listen to one another again and do the work of the American public.

Mr. Speaker, the public is watching.

Source