Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Let me first of all thank you for the leadership you have provided and continue to provide. Those of us who know you well, we often joke and say we don't know anybody that has got as much energy as you have got. You are here this minute. You are someplace else the next minute. You were dealing with a group of ladies in the hallway the other day from Houston. They were the wives of ministers. One happened

to have been a lady who had once lived in the community where my office is located in Chicago, and so I said, Hey, you went out to Houston and found yourself a minister who is a preacher and you have got a husband and so it must be a good place for people to go.

But I just want to join you in highlighting that we talk a great deal about low-income people, and we talk a great deal about the safety net; and it seems to me that our colleagues have decided to attack every safety net program that there is, no matter what it is. They believe that it is providing too much and that government really ought not be a government of service, that government should be a government of coordination and should just be a government of rules and regulations, but it should not provide any help, any assistance to those individuals who have fallen on hard times and tough times.

I have always believed you could measure the effectiveness of a government by how well it treats its young people, how well it treats its old people, and how well it deals with the needs of those who have difficulty caring for themselves.

But I represent a very diverse district, and so not only do I have all of these individuals who have all of the needs that we just mentioned, but I also represent the futures industry--the Board of Trade, the Mercantile Exchange, and the stock market. I was sitting beside a trader on the airplane last week, and he was moaning and groaning and talking about how devastating this shutdown is on the overall economy of our country. You know, you think in terms of the individuals who receive the benefits of a WIC program; but, guess what, if those who produce the food, if they can't sell it, if they can't move it, if they can't do anything with it, what is going to happen, it sits in somebody's warehouse and rots. It sits in somebody's warehouse and spoils. And so this slows down the economy. In order for the economy to get a lift, to pick up, people must be buying and selling, providing services, exchanging goods, exchanging ideas, moving money, moving money around, otherwise the economy goes flat. Nothing is happening.

So I don't know how we think that shutting down the government, and Chicago is a big town and of course it is a regional office town, and so there are a lot of government workers. We are the regional headquarters for Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. A lot of government workers are there. Now, all of these individuals are laid off. They are not able to ride the CTA. That takes money out of the transit system. Them not having to come downtown and park their cars, that takes money out of the parking garages, just like it is around here now. It is practically dead. All of things that people would normally be doing, the people who work in the cleaners, they can't work because there is nobody here to bring their clothes. The restaurants are practically empty. And so it seems to me that there is an effort not to move the economy, but to shut down the economy of our country. It makes no sense at all. None whatsoever. And so we have actually seen a shift now.

People are finally beginning to decide that, hey, ObamaCare, as they like to call it, but let me tell you, for me it is the best thing that ever happened to health care since the Indians discovered corn flakes. It provides an opportunity for millions of people to get care who never, ever had health insurance during their lifetime. Never, ever. And so now we see that that is going to stay. I mean, there are so many people signing up in Illinois, we can't even keep up with them. Our county government has signed up more than 100,000 people in one county, in Cook County alone. They started before we really started because they got a waiver and were able to do it.

I want to commend you again for the leadership and for the dynamic way in which you function, helping the American people know that we can't stand still, we can't stop, we have to keep moving and that struggle, struggle, strife and pain, as Frederick Douglass would say, are the prerequisites for change. So if we want change, we have to keep struggling, and that is exactly what we are going to do.

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Let me say one thing about the farm bill, because I am very sympathetic and empathetic with farmers.

I grew up on a farm, so I know a little bit about farming and how valuable. Of course, Illinois is a great farm State. But I am not in favor of all of these great big subsidies that we give to some people, like sugar growers that help to keep the price of sugar so high until the candy makers and the cookie makers and ice cream processors and all these people have serious difficulty making or producing the products that they sell.

There is a lot of give-and-take in these decisions that we make, and there ought to be enough give-and-take to know that it can't just be my way or the highway. It can't just be my thoughts and ideas. It is time to really put behind us all of the difficulty that we have had. I am hoping that the next time I go home that I can tell the people in my district, Yes, we have reached an agreement. The government is going to reopen. We are going to function, and America is going to move like we know it can, like we know it will. That is going to be the legacy of this shutdown, that we are going to cut it off and reopen.

I thank you for the opportunity.

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