Consequences of Government Shutdown

Floor Speech

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important before we move into the weeks ahead that we take a minute and ask ourselves what happened last week during the shutdown? What were the consequences of the shutdown? What did the shutdown mean to Americans? It is important to pause and ask, What really happened? Because as the days roll by, people are going to just move on to the next thing.

Let's be clear: this irresponsible shutdown cost the economy $24 billion in lost economic output, or about 0.6 percent of annualized growth, according to Standard & Poor's. That is $24 billion of people not making purchases that they had planned to because they thought they had better hold on to their money because they didn't know what was going to happen. That is $24 billion of businesses that did business with people who were Federal employees who didn't have their check or didn't know if they were going to have it.

I mean, the untold damage that the Republican majority in the House did to this economy is a shameful thing, and they did it for one reason and one reason only: to deny millions of Americans affordable health care. Now, I think that it is important to mark this moment and to be very clear about what happened and the losses we incurred. This economy lost 120,000 jobs, according to the Council of Economic Advisers; 120,000 jobs because of lower demand, because of a number of things. A number of people were losing their livelihood because of the shutdown, again, because the majority in the House sees fit to deny millions of Americans affordable health care.

Now, in the days to come now that the shutdown is over, there is no question they will try to amp up and build up the bugs in the computer system, but thousands of people are getting health care and signing up right now. The news is actually good, and there has never been a system that is new that didn't have problems. In fact, my friends on the Republican side of the aisle, I invite them to go back to Medicare part D, the prescription drug benefit in which they said that Big Pharma didn't have to compete for prices, they just could demand the price and we had to pay it, the one that created the doughnut hole. In the beginning, there were all kinds of glitches associated with that system.

So, yes, we are working out bugs, but they are being worked out, and there are thousands of people every day who are getting the health care access they never would have had and insurance reform that they never would have had if the Republicans would have had their way.

Also, I just want to make clear that people should know that there were individual stories that occurred that people should never forget. Hundreds of people were furloughed, and thousands more didn't know if they were going to get paid in the month of October. Consider the anxiety that the Republican majority needlessly inflicted on American families, and inflicted it on public employees who serve our country every single day to the best of their ability. People seeking new Social Security cards in Minneapolis found the office closed. That is my district. People saying, Wait a minute, I need a new Social Security card and can't get one because of the Republican shutdown--that was wrong.

The Veterans Administration offices were understaffed, and school trips were canceled because national parks were closed. It was galling to me that as the Republicans shut down the national monuments, they had the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to go to the World War II Memorial and act like somebody shut that memorial down other than them. It is amazing.

I can tell you that this moment, these last 2 weeks that we saw, shouldn't be forgotten. They should be remembered.

I want to thank the 87 sensible Republicans who voted with the Democrats in order to reopen the government, and I just want to let everyone know that we can debate things here. We can try to improve the Affordable Care Act. We can talk about parts that could be better, and we can make it better. I encourage us to do that.

But can we not shut down the government and do damage to the American economy just so we can score a political point and deny health care to thousands of people, perhaps millions of people? Can we work out our differences in the normal course of legislating?

The Republicans know how to change the Affordable Care Act. They even know how to legitimately try to get rid of it through the 45 ways that they offered legislation to destroy or defund or delay ObamaCare. They have done it before, but this time, they didn't go through the normal course. They shut down the government and threatened default, and that was wrong.

I just want people to remember what happened. Maybe we can avoid it in the months ahead, and I certainly hope you will.

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