Unanimous Consent Request--H.J. Res. 72

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to talk about the need to reopen government--and not to reopen government in a piecemeal way, one bit this week and then another bit next week, which seems to be the newest gambit on the table. We need to reopen the government because the government of this country should have never shut down in the first place.

Few States are feeling the impact of the shutdown more than Virginia. I wish to tell two stories, a personal one and then a story about one community in my State.

In my State many Federal employees live in Virginia. About 150,000 Federal employees are jeopardized currently by the shutdown, and 70,000 of them are DOD civilians who were already furloughed earlier this year. One of the employees who is jeopardized is a major in the Air Force Reserve by the name of Eric Ryan. He lives in northern Virginia, is married, and has four children.

Eric had a distinguished career in the Air Force, retired, became a civilian, rejoined the Air Force Reserve, and is currently working at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon as a civilian, he is currently furloughed with a wife and four children to support.

Eric is a Presidential Management Fellow and has been loaned to my office for a period of time. He showed up at the Pentagon Tuesday to get furloughed, and then he came to my office to hear me deliver my furlough speech to all of my employees. He got the double dose that day.

This afternoon I have the honor of going and participating in the promotion ceremony for Eric Ryan from major to lieutenant colonel. I am going to talk about him and his qualifications, but it is going to be a bitter moment for all of us as I engage in that promotion for this wonderful person. He first served this Nation by flying dozens of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves the Nation in a new way, but has now been furloughed twice this year, once because of the sequester and next because of the shutdown. We have tens of thousands of veterans such as Eric Ryan who are going through the furlough experience.

The second is a community story. If you were to ask where in Virginia would you feel the impact of the sequester, I think most people might think the neighborhoods around the Pentagon or Hampton Roads, where there is naval power. But the effects are being felt everywhere.

I wish to speak about one community, Chincoteague, the barrier island off the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the subject of the famous children's book, ``Misty of Chincoteague.'' It is beautiful community, a tiny small town.

Chincoteague's economy is fundamentally about visits to the national seashore, Assateague and Chincoteague Islands. But those parks and national resources have been closed.

I got a call Tuesday morning right away from friends in Chincoteague saying: Chincoteague is motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and people who sell suntan lotion and sunglasses. Because of the closure, the entire economy has had its guts pulled out during the Federal shutdown.

Moreover, there is a historic lighthouse at the wildlife refuge that has been restored. It has taken 6 years to restore. This week was the opening and celebration of the lighthouse. They expected visitors to come from everywhere. That has been cancelled.

Chincoteague has one other industry that is very important. They didn't only want to be about tourism, so over the last 15 to 20 years they have worked to build up the capacity of NASA at Wallops Island, which is 5 miles from Chincoteague Island.

Kids who graduate from high school and are interested in science and math don't have to move away and never come home. They can get a science and math degree, come back, and work as rocket scientists. Eighty percent of the NASA employees at Wallops near Chincoteague have been furloughed as a result of this shutdown.

The experience of Col. Eric Ryan, who works in my office, and the experience of this small community on the Eastern Shore of Virginia demonstrates how serious these effects are.

The good news is we can solve this if Speaker Boehner would only allow a vote to reopen government.

The Presiding Officer knows this because we sat through it together. It bears a little bit of repetition.

The Senate passed a budget on March 23 that funds all of these issues at the level that the Senate thinks is right. The same week the House passed a budget funding government at levels they think is right.

Under the Budget Control Act of 1974, the right strategy at that point was to put the two budgets in conference and let conferees figure it out. For folks who aren't familiar with it--and there may be some who are listening--a budget conference is a pretty simple thing.

When I was Governor of Virginia, we had them all the time. The two Houses would pass different budgets. Each House takes their budget, goes into the negotiating room, sits down, and compares. One side wins on this issue, one side wins on the other, and on a third issue they might split it 50-50. The House budget and the Senate budget are very different.

But that is what we do. We sit down, listen, dialogue, compromise, and we solve the problems of the country. Nineteen times since March 23 we have stood on the floor of this body and said we want to go to conference with the House on this budget. Nineteen times, the last of which was yesterday, a small handful of Senators--and that was the phrase that the Senator from Utah used once on the floor in blocking this: We are a small handful of Senators--and the House Republicans have blocked a budget compromise.

For the last 6 1/2 months we have not had the opportunity to sit down and dialogue. For folks who don't know how a budget conference works, if, in a conference a compromise is reached, it doesn't just become law like that. The compromise has to come back to both Houses. Both Houses debate the compromise, both Houses vote on the compromise, and everyone's interests are protected. They can look at the compromise and decide whether they like it or don't.

For 6 1/2 months we have been blocked in an effort to go to budget conference. Imagine our amazement. In this body on Monday night, after the House shut down government, 3 hours later they passed a bill and said: We have an idea. Let's have a conference. Finally, 6 1/2 months after they shut down government. But let's have it be a really particular kind of conference, not a conference about the budget of the United States. Let's have a conference about whether the Government of the United States should be open or closed.

I know I can speak for my colleagues who are here. Our view is we will negotiate, compromise, and listen to any policy issue. Budget negotiation is exactly how you do this or policy debates are how you do it. But what none of us in this body or in the House should ever negotiate is whether the United States exists or not, whether it is funded or not, whether it is open or closed.

I believe it has to be open. That is essentially what our oath of office says we have to do when we say we will faithfully discharge all the duties of the office to which we have been elected.

We also won't negotiate whether the United States should pay its bills because the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in Section 5 makes very plain that the public debt of the United States and its validity shall not be questioned.

There is a way forward here, and it is such a simple way forward: that is, Speaker Boehner needs to allow a vote in the House. It is simple. Allow a vote and not only allow a vote, but allow a vote on a budget number that he has already agreed to.

The continuing resolution the Senator from Connecticut talked about that is currently pending, funds government for an interim period of time at a budget level that was the House's number. It is not a number I liked. We had a different number in the Senate, a higher number we want to fund it to. But we accepted the House's number for the short-term spending bill out of a spirit of compromise.

We sent it back to the House and we said: We are compromising. We are not even going 50-50. We are compromising by accepting your budget number. This is not as if the Senator from Utah said we want to fund everything or nothing, no. We have other things we would like to fund that we are not funding in this bill because we accepted everything the House wants to fund in their CR.

They only need to accept yes for an answer. The good news is this is not a partisan issue because many Senate Republicans want to do exactly what I am suggesting.

Based on current reports in the House, there are numerous House Republicans--four of whom are from Virginia--who are publicly on the record. They wish to do exactly as we are suggesting.

Speaker Boehner, bring your own spending bill up for a vote. If you do it will pass. If it passes, government will reopen. Once government has reopened, we can have a budget conference and talk about any issue the House wants to talk about, any issue that we want to talk about. But it is time to end hostage politics and reopen the doors.

The Speaker has it in his hands to do that, simply and immediately.

I yield the floor.

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