Government Shutdown

Floor Speech

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, quite a day--first day of the government shutdown.

Americans come to Washington to see the Lincoln Memorial, visit the Smithsonian, go to the National Zoo. They go to New York to see the Statue of Liberty--``give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for freedom.'' Go to national parks--the treasures of our country--closed. Services tapered down. No new patients at the National Institutes of Health. This should not be in America. Government shutdowns are wrong, and they're bad for our country.

Now, let's think a little bit about how we got here. We got here because the job of the Congress, according to the Constitution, is to come up with a budget and appropriate monies. The Republicans have had a budget, and the Democrats in the House have asked month after month after month after month to have a conference committee appointed so that we could work with the Senate and come up with a budget. And the Republicans--even though we had bills, letters, requests--no conference, no, no, no, no, no.

Now, beyond the last minute, beyond midnight last night, when all of their failed attempts to get the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--and that's what it is, it's an affordable care act and a patient protection act--abolished; passed 3 years ago; 43rd attempt. Reality: it's not going to happen. It's the law of the land. And one day it will be seen, like Social Security and Medicare, as one of the three greatest laws ever passed by this Congress.

But they've tried everything they can to stop it: defund it, put it off a year, come up with different prevarications. At the last minute after midnight they say: We want a conference committee. They can get a conference committee if they come with a clean continuing resolution.

And what's in their continuing resolution? A budget of $986 billion. The Ryan figures were less. That's what they wanted. It's not what the Democrats wanted. The Democrats want a higher budget. This cuts 17 percent from Health and Human Services, programs the government offers to people in need, the safety net, people who more than ever need SNAP payments, need Meals on Wheels, need assistance. We accepted their lower figure for a continuing resolution. Even then it wasn't enough. They put it in all these proposals and abolished the health care bill.

You know, when the Republicans came to power about 3 1/2 years ago, one of the things they told the American people: We're going to be different. We're not going to have bills that combine different subjects. You know all you people don't like that, these bills with different subjects that come back from the Senate or pass the House with amendments. We're not going to do that. Then they come with bills that are the budget, a continuing resolution, along with abolishing ObamaCare. That's against what they said they would do.

They said they were concerned about the debt, and they have offsets--no bill could pass without an offset; nothing could contribute to the deficit. Yet they brought a bill, a continuing resolution, but abolishing the medical device tax, costing the government $30 billion. No offset.

In the history on ObamaCare, they have been cited by PolitiFact twice for having the governmental ``Lie of the Year.'' One is they said there were death panels, panels that simply said that end-of-life discussions could be covered by government payments, a proposal that Republicans put forward--I believe with Senator Grassley and a gentleman from Louisiana.

They also said it was a government takeover of health care. It's not a government takeover; it's insurance. It's the plan Mitt Romney put into effect, Bob Dole championed, Richard Nixon championed. It's a Republican plan. Most Democrats would have preferred a single payer, certainly a public option. They're not satisfied with that.

Now they're talking about a special deal that Congress people get. Shame on them. I, for one, don't take Federal insurance. I have a different program. But for the people in Congress and their staffers, because of an amendment Senator Grassley put in the bill, they go into the exchanges and they leave their Federal health care plan they've been in. It was subsidized, like employers subsidize health care. Now it is no longer. It's unfortunate.

My time has run out. The government has run out.

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