Pain of Government Shutdown is Too Great

Floor Speech

Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, as this shutdown drags on--and I concur with the comments of my colleague from West Virginia--it is serious and having serious consequences. The American people are left to wonder why.

Back here in Washington, D.C., you have all kinds of talking points and spin, and it circles around and can easily get very confusing as everyone seems to focus on the wrong things as to what caused this. And, really, it is very simple; and I think understanding it and getting Democrats and Republicans to stop talking past each other is the first step to getting out of this.

We have to understand that basically when you pass a budget to fund the government, the first thing you argue about is how much money is spent on it; and we had that argument and, believe me, there are deep disagreements between the Republican House, the Democratic Senate, and the White House on that.

But an agreement was reached between Speaker John Boehner and Harry Reid on the level of funding; and that level of funding, frankly, is vastly lower than Democrats want, and we were going to go forward with that until the Speaker changed his mind and decided that he wanted something else. So if you are wondering why Harry Reid, the Senator, the Majority Leader in the Senate, is upset about this situation, it is in part because he had a deal and the Republicans went back on that deal.

But it gets worse than that. So instead of simply agreeing to the amount of money that would fund the government, Republicans are now saying, no, they want policy changes within the budget in order to fund the government, in order to just simply keep it open and in order to raise the debt ceiling so that we can pay our bills.

Now, policy changes do occasionally happen within appropriations bills, but only when they are agreed upon between the House, the Senate, and the White House. And the problem that the Republicans have and what they have had for 3 years is they simply do not have the votes to pass the policy changes that they want because they didn't win the election last time. President Obama won the election, Democrats control the Senate, and, ironically, Democrats actually won 52 percent of the vote for Congress, but because of gerrymandering, Republicans wound up with more seats.

But however we got here, they do not have the votes to advance the agenda that they want to advance, and they are willing to shut down the government and stop funding it and not raise our debt ceiling; and, by the way, every day we get closer to that debt ceiling and not raising it is a day that is bad for this economy, all because they can't pass their policy agenda through the present Congress. Which raises the interesting question, What is that policy agenda? And that perhaps is the most frustrating thing about this.

We heard originally that they didn't pass the continuing resolution to fund the government because they wanted to end ObamaCare. Now editorials have been written by leaders; by the majority leader, Mr. Cantor. I have heard Paul Ryan say, no, no, no, it is not about ObamaCare; we understand we are not going to get that. Okay. So what policy change is it that you want? And this is where you get into the deficit. But, again, the Republicans haven't specified what they want on this.

Now, we know if you go back through 3 years of history, what they say they want, they want tax reform, though it hasn't been specified, and they want cuts in entitlements to get us closer to a balanced budget. They are completely unwilling to consider any revenue increases.

Now, the problem with this is the President doesn't agree. The Senate doesn't agree. The deficit is a problem, no question, but Democrats believe that part of that solution has to be revenue; and to this point we get $600 billion in revenue as a result of the deal that was reached last January in exchange for over $2 trillion in cuts, $2 trillion between the cuts that were made in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the cuts that have now been forced on us by sequestration, $2 trillion in cuts and $600 billion in tax increases.

But be that as it may, the Republicans don't have the votes. They don't have the support of the President, and they don't have the support of the Senate to get those cuts, and yet they insist on shutting down the government.

Now, the big problem is what is it that they would want in tax reform and entitlement reform? And this is the thing that I think the American public is unaware of. The Republicans keep saying that they want entitlement reform, which means cuts in entitlements. They keep saying that they want tax reform. They have been in charge of this House for 3 years. They have not brought to the floor or passed out of committee any tax reform or any entitlement reform.

They put it in their budget, which is just sort of a big-picture list of future objectives of what they want to do. Why haven't they passed legislation? If they are willing to shut down the government and cause all of the pain that we have heard because they fervently believe that we need entitlement cuts and tax reform, the least they can do is bring it to the floor and tell us what it is.

Oddly, the President and Democrats have put more on the table in terms of reforming our entitlements. As part of the Affordable Care Act, we made reductions in Medicare, which the Republicans beat us up for and which has been responsible for Medicare actually going down in inflation.

The only solution for this, tell us what you want and understand how this situation works. The pain is too great.

Source