Default Prevention Act of 2013-- Motion to Proceed--
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MURPHY. Sometimes in the Senate we deal with numbers that are a little too big for constituents and even for us to fathom. One number we throw around in Connecticut is the number $50 billion. That is the amount of money we need over the next 20 years to make the necessary improvements along our rail line in order to keep it in a good state of repair, never mind to do the expansions we so badly need to get our economy back and running in Connecticut. It is only basically to do all of the repair work that we need to keep trains running safely from Boston to Washington, DC. We need $50 billion to get that done.
I give you that number because what we have learned today is that S&P estimates that the cost of this 2-week shutdown to the U.S. Government is $24 billion, half of what the northeastern States need to maintain in state of good repair the most important rail line to the Nation for the next decade.
In 2 weeks we lost $24 billion to this economy. This is the same amount of money that it took to do the Big Dig in Boston and half the money that we need to do important improvements along the longest, biggest, most important stretch of rail line in this country--for nothing, for absolutely nothing.
We are hopefully going to consent on a path forward shortly that will allow us to vote on a bill that essentially represents the same offer that has been on the table to both Republicans and Democrats for 2 weeks. This is to reopen the government and to operate until January of next year and to extend the debt ceiling until February of next year.
Of course, the cost is not only in the short-term, not only about all of that money we lost, but $2 billion of that was lost money to the Treasury of the United States. It is also what we lose every single day that we continue forward on this theory that it is somehow best to run this country by manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.
As the chairman of the European Affairs Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, I have been able to hear on a daily and weekly basis European impressions of this country from the outside. They look at this Nation with envy because they see the demographic trends which allow this country to stay relatively young compared to the rest of the world. They see relative economic growth compared to countries in Europe and throughout the industrialized world. They see us on a pathway to energy independence, whereby we are not going to be reliant on oil from the Middle East. We will be able to produce, whether it will be gas or renewables, at home.
They look at our country with wonder because they see all of these trend lines running in favor of the United States, essentially leapfrogging, catapulting the rest of the world with respect to the global recovery. The only thing stopping us from that inevitability, that global economic rebirth for the United States, is government by crisis.
Mark Zandi came to the Joint Economic Committee. He is a bipartisan economist. He has advised Senator McCain and criticized both parties. He says the same thing. He says the only thing stopping a robust recovery in this Nation is the fact that we essentially write budgets and extend debt ceilings for 2, 3, 4 months at a time.
I come to the floor because my only hope, my only vision of a paper-thin silver lining to this fiasco over the past 2 weeks is that the American public has just said definitively that they don't want this to be the way the government runs any longer. If there is one message to this handful of conservatives, mostly in the House of Representatives but a few in the Senate that have caused this shutdown, the message is very simple. They are not going to be able to advance their ideological aims--in this case trying to end, repeal or delay the health care bill--by shutting down the government and threatening default on American debt.
President Obama and our majority leader had to draw a line. They had to draw a line because that is what the American public was demanding, that we put an end to this governance by crisis. If there is a silver lining, it is hopefully--even though we are only extending the continuing resolution and the debt ceiling for a matter of months--that we won't go through this catastrophe again because the American public has said enough is enough.
They know what we should know in the Senate. There is enormous room for compromise moving forward.
Today a group of Senators held a meeting on delivery system reform. There were 18 Senators who came to this meeting to hear a presentation by the Bipartisan Policy Center on a bipartisan proposal to save over $500 billion to the U.S. Treasury simply by reordering the rules of how we run Medicare, not by trimming benefits, not by requiring more in taxes, simply by reordering the way we pay for health care.
It was a proposal backed by everyone from Bill Frist to Tom Daschle, and it suggests there is so much room for agreement between Republicans and Democrats if we just decide to set policy for years rather than for months.
I know we walk away from this with a sense of both outrage and hopefulness that we can maybe figure out a way to come together. Although this is my first year in the Senate, I have been in this place for 6 years, between the House and this body--but this feels like ``Groundhog Day'' in the sense that every time we find our way through one of these crises, we all say to each other: This is the last time. We all lock arms and say: Isn't it great that we found bipartisan agreement, and now we can use this momentum moving forward to avoid this kind of crisis in the future. I have seen this play before. It seems within days or weeks we just fall back to our old habits of digging trenches and fighting each other more than we talk to each other and again governing by crisis.
I think this time is different, just because the depth of the dysfunction was different than ever before, the cries of the American public were greater than ever before. But we should remember, as this report from the Bipartisan Policy Center on delivery system reform tells us, there is still enormous room for the two parties to set out goals we agree on. If we push aside the most strident extremist voices that largely come from the tea party caucus of the House of Representatives, there is so much we can do.
As my European friends remind me on an almost daily basis, the only factor stopping the American economy from powering forward and becoming once again a giant of manufacturing, of global financial services, and of innovation--the only thing stopping us from that leapfrog forward--is figuring out that governance by crisis holds us back.
We made the promise to each other before that when we get through one of these crises it will be our last. I commend our leaders--I commend Leader Reid and Senator Murray--for setting up a process for the rest of this year where we can come to some resolution on a budget that sets policy for years rather than for months. This time, though, the promise we have made to each other has to stick. It is the only way forward for this place, and it is the only way forward for an economy that is just waiting to be unshackled and to conquer the world again.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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