Providing for Consideration of Expected Employees' Pay Continuing Appropriations Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), my good friend, for granting me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my Republican friends are devolving into self-parody. The solution to this unnecessary and manufactured crisis is simple, and it hasn't changed for months:

Step one, pass a clean, short-term continuing resolution at Republican sequester levels to reopen the government;

Step two, pass a clean debt ceiling bill so that the United States will not default for the first time in history and so we don't send the economy into a tailspin;

Step three, finally agree to go to conference on the budget so we can sit down and talk about our priorities.

Let me go over that once more just in case there's any confusion on the other side of the aisle: reopen the government; raise the debt ceiling; and negotiate on the budget.

That has been what the White House and Democrats in Congress have been asking for over and over and over and over again. It's what we're asking for today, and it's what we will ask for tomorrow.

By contrast, the list of House Republican demands changes every 10 minutes: repeal ObamaCare, defund ObamaCare, delay ObamaCare, stage a non-filibuster filibuster, ask for the entire Romney economic platform in order to raise the debt ceiling, yell at park rangers, fund this part of the government, fund that part of the government, pay furloughed employees, pay essential employees, hold a conference meeting, hold a press conference, rinse and repeat.

Enough, Mr. Speaker. Enough.

Here we are again with yet another convoluted, cockamamie legislative effort that is going absolutely nowhere. We have yet another ``message bill'' that is designed to win today's news cycle but that gets us no closer to resolving this crisis.

Today's effort is particularly pathetic, Mr. Speaker. Instead of actually solving the problem and letting the American people get on with their lives, the bill before us today would create that most cherished and beloved Washington institution, a committee--not just any committee, no, but another supercommittee. It's Supercommittee 2: The Wrath of Cruz.

We have before us a bill that was dreamed up--Lord knows when--floated in the press at 10 o'clock this morning, distributed as legislative language at 11:30 this morning, in the Rules Committee at 12:30, and on the floor at 3:20. Forget the 3-day rule, Mr. Speaker. This contraption barely even followed the 3-hour rule.

And the Superdupercommittee Part 2--pardon me, the ``bicameral working group on deficit reduction and economic growth''--that is created by this bill doesn't come with any instructions. There is no time line. There is no deadline. It doesn't reopen the government. It doesn't prevent a default. It doesn't do much of anything.

It's unclear whether coffee and pastries will be provided at the Superdupercommittee Part 2 working group. Maybe we need another bill to do that.

This is just another press release. Mr. Speaker, we do not need another committee to do the job that we were elected to do. Let me remind my colleagues that we have this thing called the Budget Committee, and the Republicans made a big deal about the fact that we passed a budget in the House and the Senate didn't pass a budget in the Senate. Then the Senate did pass a budget. What you're supposed to do is then go to conference and work out your differences and come up with a final product. For 6 months we have been pleading with the Speaker of the House and the Republican leadership to appoint conferees to negotiate a budget agreement. That's the way it's supposed to work. The Senate does something, we do something, and we negotiate the differences. For 6 months the Republicans have refused to appoint conferees, and now they're saying we need this kind of vague committee that has no instructions, that has no time line. It doesn't do anything to stop the government shutdown. It doesn't do anything to stop the government default on our financial obligations.

This is no way to run a railroad, let alone the United States House of Representatives. So I would urge the Republican leadership to start caring a little less about winning today's news cycle and a little more about the American people, who sent us here and who expect us to do our jobs.

Open the government. Raise the debt ceiling. Negotiate on the budget. It is really not that complicated.

In the meantime, I urge all of my colleagues to reject this closed rule, reject the underlying legislation, and reject the politics of manufactured crises.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume

Mr. Speaker, we are in this predicament because the Republicans shut the government down. It is that simple.

You own this shutdown whether you like it or not.

The gentleman quoted Politico. Let me read from Politico. It says:

President Barack Obama opened the door to a short-term debt ceiling increase in order to avoid going over the fiscal cliff and allowed negotiations between the White House and Congress on a long-term deal.

That doesn't sound like someone who doesn't want to negotiate. I'd prefer a long-term deal because I'm tired of this crisis by crisis by crisis, but this President has gone out of his way to negotiate over and over and over again.

I will just point out another thing for my colleagues. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Boehner negotiated a deal on this short-term continuing resolution to keep the government going. Speaker Boehner admitted that this week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, that they negotiated a short-term spending deal to keep the government open at the Republican sequester levels. The deal was that, in return for the Republican numbers, the Speaker wouldn't attach any extraneous materials to that short-term continuing resolution.

Obviously, that is a deal that the Speaker did not keep in large part because of a group in his conference who kind of represents, I guess, the Ted Cruz wing of the party who said that wasn't enough. They wanted to shut the government down, and they're willing to default on paying our bills for the first time in history. That is, in my opinion, unconscionable.

Let's not talk about who wants to negotiate here. Democrats have negotiated going to your level on the short-term continuing resolution. The President has been willing to negotiate time and time again. Every time he gets close to an agreement, the Speaker can't deliver. He's going to continue to try, but don't say he's not trying to negotiate.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the gentleman from South Carolina, who just spoke, I don't know what he is talking about.

We have been negotiating. This temporary spending measure that we're talking about, Harry Reid negotiated it with Speaker Boehner. It's at your levels, your sequester levels. Do you think I like that? I can't stand it, but I don't want to shut the government down.

The bottom line was the Speaker said that, in exchange for that, there would be no extraneous materials attached to that CR. He wasn't able to deliver on his promise because of some people in your conference. It's that simple.

The gentleman is on the Budget Committee. I would think that, in being on the Budget Committee, you would want to go to conference--you worked on a budget; the Senate worked on a budget--to work out those spending differences. We have tried 19 times to get you to go to conference, and you refused to negotiate with the Senate on each of those occasions.

Every time the President negotiates, unfortunately, your leadership can't deliver on the deals. So we have been negotiating, negotiating, negotiating. We still want to negotiate, but, please, the gentleman gave no reason why we should shut down this government, why the Republicans should have shut down this government, and he has given no reason why we should default on our financial obligations. We ought to pass a short-term spending bill to reopen the government, and we ought to pass a clean debt ceiling bill so we don't default on our financial obligations and ruin our economy.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to end the games, I have a better idea. Just open up the government. End the Republican shutdown.

It's really simple. We could have an up-or-down vote to open up government today, and all the Federal workers would be taken care of, and all the monuments would be reopened. We wouldn't be having all this controversy. We can get serious about negotiating a long-term spending bill. It's a better way.

So join with us and support a clean continuing resolution.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the Dean of the House.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me just remind my colleagues there's an easy way to solve all of this--reopen the government, raise the debt ceiling, and negotiate a new budget. Our minority leader has already said it on the floor. It's our willingness to cooperate.

It's not that complicated. You can save all this misery that Federal workers are now enduring by reopening the government right now. This is not that hard to do, and it's at your number. It's at Republican levels. That is a compromise on our part. We loathe those sequester numbers that Republicans insisted on enshrining--those are horrible for our economy--but to keep the government open, we're going to swallow that so we have time to work out a longer-term deal.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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Mr. McGOVERN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I served as an aide here on Capitol Hill when Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House. I think he is one of the greatest Speakers that ever served in the United States House of Representatives. He was a friend of mine as well.

I will tell you that Speaker O'Neill would never go on national TV and threaten to default on the debt to this Nation. He would never, ever act in a way that might bring this economy to ruin. He put country before political party.

I would also say that Speaker O'Neill understood the importance of working in a bipartisan way. He would be disgusted with the way this House is being run today. The bottom line is he'd be scratching his head right now, wondering why we just don't resolve this in a very simple way.

There were 200 Democrats who have signed a letter saying, We will cooperate with the Republicans to pass a clean continuing resolution at Republican levels, and we know that there are 20 Republicans in the House who publicly said they would support such a move. That's the majority. We could open up the government in a matter of minutes. In the Senate, over a dozen Republican Senators voted for cloture on a clean continuing resolution. That is bipartisanship. Accept it. This is the way this House should be run.

So I would just point that out to my colleagues that we're going through all this rigamarole for I don't know what when we could end this Republican shutdown right now by bringing a clean continuing resolution at Republican levels to the House floor. It would pass in a bipartisan way, and I predict that there will even be more than 20 Republicans that would support it. They want a way out of this.

Let's open the government. Let us not use the debt ceiling in the threatening manner in which it's being used by the Republican leadership here. We should never--I don't care what your political ideology is--default on our financial obligations. That is economic ruin for this country, and I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that. We should never use that in such a political way.

Let's work together and appoint budget conferees and go to negotiate a budget conference so we can have some parameters in terms of numbers we can work with.

I listened to some of my colleagues talking on the other side--even those who serve on the Budget Committee--and you wonder why we should have a Budget Committee if the Budget Committee doesn't mean anything. I have a lot more respect for the people that serve on that committee.

As this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

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Mr. McGOVERN. May I ask the gentleman how many more speakers he has?

Mr. SESSIONS. I would advise the gentleman, at this time, I do not have any further speakers. I thank the gentleman for asking.

Mr. McGOVERN. May I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 4 minutes remaining; the gentleman from Texas has 5 1/2 minutes remaining.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I am going to urge that we defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to vote on the clean Senate continuing resolution so that we can send it to the President for his signature today.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Massachusetts?

There was no objection.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, as we bring this debate to a close, I have the dueling emotions of being angry and being very sad--angry that we are putting the American people through this trauma. This is totally unnecessary. This is a manufactured crisis.

When my colleagues talk about the fact that Democrats aren't willing to negotiate, let me just refer to some of the recent headlines: ``Nineteen Times Democrats Tried to Negotiate with Republicans''; that's according to the National Journal. ``Republicans Spent Year Blocking Budget Conference''; that was in the Huffington Post. ``Boehner Tells GOP He is Through Negotiating with Obama''; that was in The Hill newspaper. I mean, those are the headlines about my friends' actions during these recent weeks.

The bottom line is that what we're doing today really is sad because I think it diminishes this institution. We ought to be solving problems. We ought to be finding ways to lift people up. We ought to be trying to debate ways to create more jobs and opportunity in this country. We ought to get the government running. We ought to deal with the debt ceiling, not politicize it, and we ought to work on a long-term negotiation so we have a long-term spending bill that makes sense for this country, and we're not doing that.

We're coming up with a committee today that does nothing. You pass this bill, the government still shuts down. You pass this bill, we're still headed for a default on our obligations on October 17. This does nothing. It does nothing. It is sad because it is beneath this great House of Representatives. So many incredible things have happened on this floor, and yet this is so trivial. It is so meaningless at a time of such a great crisis.

I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle that this is a crisis that my friends have brought on themselves. There is nothing that says that we should be in shutdown today other than the fact that my friends on the other side of the aisle decided to shut the government down.

Now they're saying they care about the monuments and they care about our senior citizens and our veterans, but they're the ones who shut the government down. They say they don't want to default on our financial obligations, yet we heard on ``This Week'' with George Stephanopoulos that the Speaker of the House is prepared to basically see this country default on our debt. That's what he said.

I mean, I am shocked by that kind of talk. I don't care what party you're in, where you come from ideologically. We all should at least agree that we ought to pay our bills, that if we don't, it will do great damage to our economy, and it will hurt your constituents just as much as mine. We could do so much better. We could do so much better than this.

I would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who say they want a vote on a clean continuing resolution to vote with us on some of these procedural motions. Start giving us some votes on these procedural motions, because it appears that your leadership will not give you the right to an up-or-down vote. Notwithstanding all of the talk about a transparent process, an open process, you're not going to get that vote unless you force it.

Here is the other sad thing. My friends on the other side of the aisle began this Congress by talking about regular order and a transparent, open process. Of all the stuff we've been voting on these last few days, nobody has seen it. Even the committee chairman who oversees these bills doesn't even come to the Rules Committee to testify. We don't know what we're voting on here.

We can do better. Reject this rule. Vote ``no'' on the previous question.

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