Default Prevention Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, yesterday we heard very optimistic news about steering away from the brink of American default before it became too late. Majority leader Harry Reid came to the floor and gave very optimistic reports. Minority leader Mitch McConnell came to the floor and gave very optimistic reports. They hinted very strongly that a deal was close, and time was scheduled with the caucuses, presumably to make a presentation of the deal. And then what?

We have had some very interesting speeches and colloquies from our Republican colleagues on the floor. I found the debate as to whether our defense and law enforcement experts had kept an Al Qaeda captive in the right location to be interesting. I found the earlier discussion about the insurance exchange Web sites to be a very interesting discussion. I found the discussion earlier this morning about Iran to be a very interesting discussion. What is even more interesting is what they are not talking about. What they are not talking about is that today the Republican leader pulled out of those very productive negotiations and very optimistic negotiations--pulled out of those negotiations that promised an end to this crisis. I find that absolutely stunning. I am amazed, while we are in a situation where we are that close to resolving this crisis and avoiding the catastrophes that have been predicted, that one side would simply walk away. I don't blame the minority leader. The information I have is that he was asked to do so, that the message came from the other side, from the Speaker; that Speaker Boehner torpedoed the productive bipartisan Senate negotiations that were at the brink of resolving this crisis.

Instead of the bipartisan successful process, Speaker Boehner has wanted to interrupt and bring in the same partisan House process that has been a disaster for us over and over--100-percent partisan, 100-percent politics.

We have sent bills over to the House. Those bills have never been brought up for a vote. They have been monkeyed with before they have brought them up, but House Members have never had the chance to vote on a Senate-approved measure, which would have ended this. That is the Speaker's choice. It is the so-called Hastert rule, which means that unless a strong majority of the Republicans are for something, he won't give Democrats a chance to even vote, let alone to be a part of the negotiations.

Here in the Senate we have bipartisan negotiations, with the leaders from both sides still with optimism and hope. On the other side, we have a leadership that won't talk to the Democrats, has purely made partisan decisions about whether something should come to the floor, and has not yet brought a Senate bill to the floor for a clean vote.

It is a nightmare over there. And the strategy has not worked, in case they did not get the memo.

Holding the economy hostage was a terrible choice for the Speaker. Causing the shutdown was a terrible choice. Holding the credit of the U.S. Government hostage has been a terrible choice. To use words that were used on the floor this morning by one of our Republican friends, it was a ``fool's errand''--it was a ``fool's errand''--that put the party ``in a ditch.''

Well, unfortunately, because he is the Speaker, it is not just the Republican Party that is in the ditch. The whole country is in the ditch as this default looms. Some of them are trying to get out of the difficulty they find themselves in by pretending that the default is not real. We have default deniers now side by side, I guess, with the climate deniers and the other deniers. They deny that October 17 is the real date when anything might go wrong. They deny that anything bad will actually really happen if the U.S. Government defaults. They deny--if we just pay the Treasury bills and leave other things unpaid--anything really bad will happen.

Treasury bills get sold in an auction, in a market. If you are going to that auction to buy Treasury bills and you see a government that is not paying Social Security recipients on time, that has massive liquidity and cashflow problems as a result of the debt limit failure, we may say: Yes, we will pay you first, but are you really going to pay the same rate for that security of that country while that country is facing all of these other problems? It is a preposterous notion. It is the type of notion that you can only believe when you absolutely need to believe it for your ideological purposes. Reality simply does not support a notion like that. If you are living in a cocoon world of extremist ideology, you can come up with thoughts like that. And if you are only talking to other people who think the same way, you can kind of agree that thought makes sense. But there is a little problem. Reality wins. Reality always wins.

They are playing with dynamite over there, and they are pretending that it is not even dangerous. It would be one thing if we understood that they respected how very dangerous the stunts are that they are pulling in the House Republican leadership. It is even more dangerous when they do not appear to know the danger they are causing for our economy.

I hope we will get back to work here in the Senate right away with a bipartisan solution to this rather than allowing the House and the Speaker to wreck the opportunity we had as late as yesterday in order to play dangerous partisan games. We do not have the time for that, and it is the wrong thing. It is the wrong thing in a very immediate way in terms of the damage it will do to our economy, to the world economy, to people across this country whose interest rates are pegged to Treasury bills, to anybody who depends on an economy where people have confidence that the United States is a solid investment and have confidence that our economy is going to grow. The default puts all that at risk. It creates real economic hazards for our country. But the method of getting us here has additional hazards, and I would like to close by talking about them.

From the very founding of this Republic, we have prided ourselves on our distinct American system of government. We have fought for it. We have protected it. It has seen us through world wars, civil wars, great depressions, great recessions, all types of calamity. What it fundamentally is--the phrase we use probably as much as any other about our country is that it is a government of laws. It risks being turned into--by a very small faction in one party in one House in one branch of government--a government not of laws but of threats, a government where the person who can make the scariest threat wins.

It does not matter that what they are objecting to was passed in the regular order, passed by both Houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, approved by the Supreme Court. It does not matter that it was the center of the last Presidential election and that their point of view lost convincingly. What matters to them is if they can make dangerous enough threats, they may be able to try to get their way anyway--anyway. That is not the way a government of laws behaves. That is the way a government of threats behaves.

If we go down the road of a government of threats, we will be taking a very big step away from our American heritage, away from the procedures of our American Constitution, and away from the values that have seen us through hundreds of years of growth and pride. It is a dangerous point, and the fact that they are willing to do that, the fact that they are willing to not only wreck the economy but to wreck the status of this country as one that is run by a government of laws and turn it instead into a government of threats, shows how shallowly they wear their patriotism on their sleeves. It is bunkum patriotism to put the real values of this country into the hopper and turn us into a government of threats instead of a government of laws.

A great judge, a Supreme Court Justice, once said: Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Breaking those bones to make your point is no way to enhance our democratic society.

So I hope the majority leader and the minority leader will resume their negotiations right away. I hope, frankly, they have begun already and I just do not know about it yet. But we have to get going. And if the minority leader is unwilling to tell Speaker Boehner: No. Knock it off. You have done enough damage already. We are going to solve this in the Senate, and we are going to sit down and have a bipartisan compromise--if he is unwilling to say that, then we need to come back to the floor and we need to bring up the bill the Republicans filibustered on Saturday that would have gotten us out of this pickle. Time is short. We have to get moving. If our colleagues on the other side then want to filibuster--to filibuster--the solution to this debt limit crisis, they will have shown their hand in a very dangerous way.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source