Default Prevention Act of 2013-- Motion to Proceed--
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURPHY. We are now going into week three of a government shutdown, a totally unnecessary, totally avoidable, totally manufactured government shutdown that is now morphing together with a potential failure on behalf of the U.S. Government to pay its debts, the first time we have ever intentionally done that in our entire country's history.
This is not theoretical any longer. This is now right on top of us. On Thursday of this week we will no longer have enough money to pay all of the bills that come in to the government. We only have about 65 percent of the funds necessary to pay out all of the bills that come due to us, whether it is to our creditors or to the thousands of small businesses that rely on contracts with the Federal Government every week to pay their bills as well.
I appreciate all of my colleagues coming down here and talking about the real-world consequences of what this shutdown has meant and what a failure to pay our debts will mean. I come down and want to share a handful of stories from my State of Connecticut to tell you what is going on out there beyond the talking heads on the cable news networks. They are simple stories, but they are impactful because for hundreds of thousands of people in my State of Connecticut, there was no margin with which to operate when this shutdown hit and the consequential economic impact that has come to so many families. There was not any money stuffed under their mattress they could pull out and try to pay the bills they could not, now that their paycheck or their business had been lost.
This is a big deal to people in Connecticut, and in Hawaii, and to States all across our land because there was so much economic hurt that had already piled up for months and years that people had no wiggle room when the tea party decided to stick a knife into the backs of already hurting families.
That is why this makes no sense. It is not as though we had the cushion as an economy, it is not as though families had the ability to take on a little extra hurt when the tea party decided to shut down our government--not that it would make sense even if we were living in heady economic times. But today, right now, for families who are getting killed by an economy that has recovered for the top 5 or 10 percent of America but certainly has not recovered for the bottom 80 percent, this is no time to be playing around with people's lives.
Every single year at the start of the home heating season, I go to a nonprofit in Waterbury, CT, which dispenses home heating assistance to the thousands of families in the Greater Waterbury, CT, area who know that without a little bit of help from this agency they will literally not be able to heat their home, that their children will go cold that winter, because even though they are making money, they cannot keep up with the mounting bills.
Every single year, as I watch the sort of macroeconomic numbers get better for the economy, I keep on thinking that when I go to that agency in August or September or October, they are going to tell me: Guess what, CHRIS. Less people are coming in this year than last year to ask for home heating assistance.
We are in year five of this recession now. Every single year of those five, the number has gotten bigger--every single year. Even as unemployment goes down, demand for home heating assistance in Connecticut goes up. Why? Because the top echelon of our country has recovered but nobody else has. So that is why when this shutdown hit, it hurt so badly for someone such as Rich Martin in New London, CT. Rich did something heroic during this recession. He started a new business. Frankly, even more heroic, he started a bookstore and a record store in New London, CT called the Telegraph.
He said that business has been growing for the last 12 months. Every month he has been doing a little bit better. Then guess what. The shutdown. Rich wrote me and said: After growth in my business over the last 12 months, people have stopped coming in these last weeks. Because in New London, CT, where we make submarines for the U.S. Navy, where we have submariners at our base there, we have a whole lot of people who depend on the Federal Government or contracts from the Federal Government to be able to pay their employees. Nobody is coming into the Telegraph any more. His business is getting hurt. A business, a small businessman who did something great, is now wondering whether he can make it through the next couple of days and weeks.
Here is how the trickledown of this happens: Kathi Sanborn in Hartford is paying the bills right now by babysitting. She is babysitting for a couple. But the husband is a defense contractor. Guess what. He has been furloughed, so he cannot pay her to babysit. Frankly, he is home anyway, so he can look after the kids. So she does not have her babysitting gig any longer. He is out of work and she is out of work. Guess what. That is not where it ends. Because now that Kathi does not have her babysitting job, she is going to stop buying what she used to buy. She is going to have her groceries. She is not going to go to the store down the street for a purchase for herself. It just keeps on going.
Don Spaeth in Putnam, small business owner, runs a little restaurant there. Small town, Putnam. He says his business has dried up the last couple of weeks. People are not coming in.
Rich from Fairfield has a severely autistic son. He is an adult, so he was on Social Security disability. But he had his disability benefits cut off because they wanted to review his eligibility. Well, guess what. The reviewer has been furloughed for 2 weeks. So his son, who was hoping to be able to have his benefits turned back on, or at least have resolution so the family would know what to do, now cannot get a resolution to his disability claim. His son cannot pay the bills to the provider who gives him housing. He is potentially going to be out on the streets because he does not have a reviewer in the Social Security office. That hurts economically, but that hurts psychologically as well.
Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers in New Haven gets Federal money to do something really simple: Provide frail seniors with rides to their doctors' appointments. They lost their Federal funding for 2 weeks, so they cannot give rides any longer. So seniors are sitting home not able to get to their doctors' appointments. Think about that. You have an 85-year-old widow who has to worry every day if she is going to get sick because she lost her ride to the doctor's office.
Then let me read you this quote from Michael in Hartford. I do not even have to embellish it:
I am an attorney and work for the IRS.
I have 3 children, a 16 year old girl and 8 year old twins. My wife is pregnant with my fourth child. My 16 year old is taking driver's education and wants her license. I cannot now pay for the insurance necessary for her. She also wanted to take a PSAT prep course, another $1,200 that I don't have. She needs to start visiting college campuses. More money that I don't have. One of my twins, Sofia, had some learning disabilities and had private tutors and other professionals to assist her in staying on grade level in reading and math. I will soon run out of savings to pay for Sofia's support system because November 1st means that there is a mortgage payment, car payment, car insurance payments and the other dozen or so monthly bills that keep our household up and running. I do hope that the shutdown ends soon so that I can get back to work.
These stories can be repeated, frankly, hundreds of thousands of times over all across this country. While to some people they may sound like small stories--a babysitter losing a job, the inability to get your disabled daughter a little bit of help for a couple months--they add up to $1.6 billion in economic activity coming out of our country every single week.
They add up to unemployment claims jumping to their highest level last week in 6 months. They add up to consumer confidence being the lowest in this country since the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008.
This doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is not as if we can tread water or move backwards economically while the rest of the world waits for us to resume our mantle of economic leadership.
China says they are looking to take their $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasurys and find someplace else for it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURPHY. Last month Japan announced its machinery sales were the best since 2008. The rest of the world is moving on.
If we are doing this much damage to the economy, why are we here? We are here mainly because tea party Republicans in the House see this misery as a bargaining chip. They couldn't get their way any other way. They couldn't win the legislative argument on the health care bill, a bill that passed the House and the Senate and was signed by the President. They couldn't win the judicial argument. It came before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court upheld the health care law. It couldn't win the electoral argument.
The health care bill was on the ballot in 2012. The President who ran on it and signed it was reelected by a wide margin. Every single Senator in this Chamber who supported it was returned to their seat.
Tea party Republicans have lost the argument on health care in all three of the traditional forums by which one would get their way in the legislative process--the legislative forum, judicial forum, and the electoral forum.
Just as a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime, they have been confronted with a last desperate option, which is to grab hold of the economy, put a gun to its head, and hope then that Democrats and President Obama will relent simply because of our compassion for people like Rich in New London, Kathi in New Hartford, Don in Putnam, the seniors who rely on Interfaith Caregivers in New Haven, and the young IRS attorney with a disabled daughter. They hope it will be our passion for those people which will cause us to do something other than what the people sent us to do and repeal, delay, or displace the health care law.
The good news is cooler heads are prevailing, that people do see--in this Chamber at least--the need to let go of the hostage. Two weeks into the shutdown, the cumulative economic effects on the economy are real. Those stories I told from Connecticut can now be multiplied thousands of times, tens of thousands of times.
The House looks as if they are going to try to pass another partisan political bill loaded with add-ons as conditions to restart the government and pay our bills. The Senate is working on a different solution, a solution that could bring together Republicans and Democrats to at least temporarily end this crisis. On behalf of my constituents in Connecticut, we certainly hope that is the result.
I yield the floor.
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