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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to deliver a status report on what the government shutdown has meant to Virginia this week. I gave one last week, and I am back on the floor to share some additional news.

I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Florida. I will talk about some similar effects. These effects are felt everywhere. It is not just furloughed employees; it is contractors, it is local communities and nonprofits, and it is the housing market.

Let me talk a bit about Virginia. Some of the pages might have been on the floor last week when I talked about a tiny community in Virginia, Chincoteague, which is a barrier island off the eastern shore of Virginia. It is not the place you might think of when you think about where Federal shutdown effects would be felt in a very specific way. But Chincoteague's economy is oriented around tourism. There is a national seashore and national wildlife refuge there, adjacent to Chincoteague Island, and so these few thousand people over the years have built up an economy that is hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery stores, drive-ins, and other shops for visitors. The fall is a very busy time. The island gets about 1.5 million visitors a year, and they are coming to the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Seashore.

On October 1, when government closed down the seashore and wildlife refuge closed down, the visitors have stopped coming. All those businesses, all those small mom-and-pops--I can see the faces of Tommy and Donna, and Jack Tarr, who is the mayor, and Glenn and Jane, my friends over there--they have called me to say: We are hit so hard because this is a busy time for us and we are closed down.

Last weekend there was a huge festival. There is a historic lighthouse on the island, and they have been working for 6 years to restore it. The opening was last week, and they were expecting hundreds or even thousands of visitors. They had to cancel it because it is on the wildlife refuge.

This weekend there was another big festival. Some of you might have read the book ``Misty of Chincoteague,'' which is about the Chincoteague Island ponies. Children read this book about ponies, probably ponies that came there from Spain, swim across the sound twice a year to Chincoteague, get shots, get inoculated. In the spring, some are sold for population control so they do not overrun the island. This weekend was the fall pony roundup. They had to cancel it because the wildlife refuge is closed.

It is not just a tourism event. It hurts all the businesses, but it is more than that. It is a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department that keeps every home and business on Chincoteague Island safe. They do not have a fire department other than the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department. They have two fundraisers a year. This weekend was one of them. They have canceled it. The volunteer fire department put up on their Web site: ``The fall pony roundup is closed because of the childish and idiotic antics of our Government.''

The other main economy in Chincoteague is NASA. There is a facility at Wallops Island, 5 miles away, and over 80 percent of the thousand employees and contractors who work at NASA, 5 miles from Chincoteague Island, are furloughed.

So you pull the guts out of the tourism economy, which this community relies on, and you pull the guts out of NASA, which the community relies on--this community has been devastated by the government shutdown, and why? Why?

Mark Wright is a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army who served in the Army for 23 years, including service tours in Iraq--a very solid veteran. We are so proud. One out of eight Virginians is a veteran--an amazing number of people. When he retired, he got a job at the Pentagon as a civilian, a DOD civilian. He got that job earlier this year. Mark Wright was furloughed earlier this year because of the sequester. He has a wife and two kids in elementary school. He was furloughed, days off work, less pay, he got through that furlough. Then October 1, furloughed again.

So this veteran who served his country, put himself in harm's way, and fought in theaters of battle more than once has been furloughed twice this year.

Mark Wright and his wife and children live in an apartment in Stafford County--south of DC. They wanted to buy a home for the first time in their lives. They are in the housing market. They decided they can't buy a home now because he doesn't know if he will have a paycheck to make a mortgage payment. He will be lucky enough to keep making the rent payment every month. It hurts their family, but it also hurts the real estate market in Stafford County.

Just this week it was reported that foreclosures in Virginia are up 52 percent from August to September, the biggest jump since the start of the recession because of the effect of sequester and these kinds of foolish antics, as the volunteer fire department described. So what Mark Wright and his family are asking is why; why are we doing this?

I had an employee roundtable with about seven furloughed employees and contractors on Wednesday afternoon in my office. They shared their anxieties about their own finances. They shared their own anxieties about having kids at home and getting a paycheck and what it would mean to them. I said to one participant: Tell me about your family. He said: I am lucky. I don't have a family. Then he caught himself and he said: I wish I was married and had a family, but for now when I am not getting a paycheck and I don't know whether I will get a paycheck, I am lucky I don't have a family. This was a DOD civilian who was a West Point grad who served as an Active-Duty Army officer for 10 years and fought overseas.

Others talked about how it felt to be kicked around just because they are trying to serve their country. One said: I have gone on unemployment. I never wanted to go on unemployment, but I have to for my family. Even those who were financially secure said: I am looking elsewhere for a job. Why would I put myself and my family through this? I have other skills. Maybe I can't serve the public anymore if the Congress is not going to back me.

Why are we doing this to these people?

A Virginia business that I am going to leave nameless called me the other day. They have thousands of employees in Virginia. The shutdown caused their weekly revenue to fall by 85 percent immediately. They are still doing work, and they are still being told--because they are contractors--that they will get paid, they are just not told when they will get pay. But they are paying for office rent and they are paying for utilities and they are paying salaries of employees and they are paying monthly health insurance premiums. They don't know when they are going to get paid, but they are having to write checks to others every day.

The owner of the business said: A few more weeks of this, and we will be bankrupt and hundreds of people will lose their jobs.

Why are we doing this to these businesses?

Yesterday the Presiding Officer was with me in a hearing before the Armed Services Committee, and a woman by the name of Jo Ann Rooney was nominated to be Under Secretary of the Navy. I asked her a question about morale in the Navy and the Pentagon now. Her answer was interesting.

Jo Ann Rooney had been working in the Pentagon for quite a while and then left 1 year ago to be president of a women's college. So she has been away from the Pentagon for 1 year. Now she is back in the Pentagon as a nominee to be Under Secretary of the Navy. Her name is pretty important in Virginia.

She said the difference in the Pentagon and with the Navy folks she was working with from when she left 1 year ago to today is completely stark. In the year that she has been gone, the furloughs hit and now the shutdown has hit. She said she is walking around the halls and looking at how people are responding. They feel like they are not supported when they are doing this important mission. She had one question: Why are we doing this to people who are working for the U.S. Navy whom we count on to protect us every day. Why?

We know, as the Senator from Florida said, that the House pushed this shutdown through unwillingness to have a budget conference. We passed a budget in March. We wanted to sit down and find a budget compromise with a very different House budget. We were going to have to compromise and do that, but Senators and House Members have blocked a conference. With no conference, we don't get a compromise. With no compromise, we don't get a budget. With no budget, the government shuts down. They pushed this through a shutdown and only after the shutdown have they said: All right. Let's talk.

Yesterday they revealed a new plan in the House. Their plan was we need to make sure we don't default on our debt, but after 11 days of shutdown, we just want to keep the government shut down. We will make sure we pay our foreign creditors, but we want to keep the government shut down.

Why? Why cause this pain? Why hurt the economy? Why push businesses to the brink of bankruptcy? Why harm the housing market? Why degrade and devalue public servants, especially those who are veterans? Why jeopardize cities and towns such as Chincoteague? Why hurt nonprofits such as the Chincoteague Island Volunteer Fire Department? Why leave families vulnerable to unemployment and force them to go on unemployment for the first time in their lives? Why cause all this pain?

No one in this country is benefiting from the U.S. government being shut down. So why is the House continuing to insist that this government remain closed?

I am continually reminded of the words by the Founder of the Republican Party 150 years ago at Gettysburg--Abraham Lincoln. At the end of that amazing speech, he resolved, and we resolved, that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth, not for a year, not for a month, not for a week, not for a day, not for an hour, not for a minute, and not for a second.

Why can't the House agree to open the government and stop all this unnecessary pain?

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source