January 15, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 8 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages H583-H587]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1600
                            END THE SHUTDOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, I think I just heard that we are in the 
25th day of the shutdown. I see some of my good Republican friends over 
there, and perhaps we ought to engage in a debate about the wisdom of 
this shutdown.
  Can anybody find any good reason for the shutdown?
  Mr. MEADOWS. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. At the moment, Mr. Meadows, perhaps I would yield and 
you can give me a 30-second explanation of why the shutdown makes 
sense, but let's talk about the shutdown.
  Let's talk about the reality that the President proposed in his 
budget for 2019 that we should spend somewhere around $1.6 billion for 
border security, not specifying walls or all of it, but just border 
security.
  We, of course, do what we always do. We took that, and we put it 
through the ringer. We came out with $1.6 billion for border security, 
including some wall in there.
  But we didn't finish the task, so we did a continuing resolution last 
September and kicked the ball down the road, which is what we really do 
best, boom, boom, boom, bounce down the road until right after 
Thanksgiving.
  Then we hadn't quite completed it, so in a day when none of us were 
here, by unanimous consent, again, we kicked the ball down the road 
until December 11.
  Then the Senate sent over a piece of legislation that was unanimously 
passed in the Senate by voice vote, and it wound up over here the next 
day. Sometime between that evening when it passed the Senate and it 
wound up over here, the President decided that he needed $5 billion for 
a border wall.
  Now, perhaps there was a discussion of appropriations sometime during 
that process. I don't know. But in any case, it was in none of the 
bills. Suddenly, we had a $5 billion addition to border security. All 
of that happened overnight.
  At the same time, the President calls into his Oval Office the 
leadership, and he says that he will shut down the government, and he 
will take the mantle of the shutdown.
  So, my good friends from the Republican side of this aisle, here we 
are on day 25.
  A lot of things are going on out there. There is not much going on 
around here, unfortunately. But what is going on out there?
  I got a phone call from a mayor of one of the small cities that I 
represent down in the agricultural part north of Sacramento. He said: 
Can you help us? One of the veterans in my district, a World War II 
veteran, is in hospice, and, over the years, he lost his Purple Heart 
for injuries that he suffered in World War II. We would like to get 
that back for him before he dies, but we can't. We can't help him.
  We can't get that Purple Heart back before this veteran dies because 
the National Archives is shut down. Normally, we could. We would make 
our request, and we would go to the National Archives. Somehow we would 
find the record, and we would get a replacement Purple Heart. We can't 
do that now. The National Archives is shut down.
  Another one of my constituents wants to start a new business in one 
of the towns that I represent west of Sacramento. It is a little 
restaurant coffee shop. He needs an SBA loan. He worked it all through 
the bank. The bank is ready to make the loan. The papers can't be 
signed. SBA is shut down.
  How long can he hang on? How long will that escrow remain open before 
this deal tanks? Well, it is 25 days thus far. Apparently, the deal is 
still in place. But businesses all across this Nation are not moving 
forward.
  Recent estimates show that two-tenths of a percent of the economic 
growth of this Nation in this 25-day shutdown has been removed from 
this economy. We are looking somewhere just north of 2\1/2\, 3 percent, 
in that range, but two-tenths of that is now gone as a result of this 
shutdown.
  Let us remind ourselves: This is entirely the making of the President 
who parachuted--no, bombed into our negotiation process here, $5 
billion in the 12 hours between the passage of a compromised, unanimous 
vote by the Senate to keep government going and the arrival and the 
vote on that bill here on this floor.
  Madam Speaker, I will also state that our Republican colleagues 
accommodated the President and put the $5 billion into the legislation 
and sent it back to the Senate, and there it sat, sine die. That 
legislation is gone.
  However, we want to open government. We think it is really important 
that those veterans across this Nation who want to get their records 
are able to do so, and those men and women who want to start a small 
business are able to get their Small Business Administration loans 
approved.
  How about Foreign Service officers? Oh, yes, the State Department 
isn't funded. Foreign Service officers are not able to get the training 
that they need. They go through a whole course before they are sent off 
to some part of the world--language, culture courses. None of that is 
happening, to say nothing of the fact that about a third of the 
appointments in the State Department have never been filled to begin 
with.
  Department of the Interior? Some of us stuck around here over the 
weekend. Normally, we would go down to the Smithsonian and take a look, 
or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, or 
maybe the National Museum of American History. Maybe we would go watch 
one of the presentations that are made at the national parks. No, that 
doesn't happen either. Woe on us here in Washington, but all across 
this Nation, the national parks are shut down.
  Fish and wildlife, now, we have a real problem here. The fish and 
wildlife refuges in California are shu down, and we are approaching the 
end of duck season. Oh, my goodness. You mean we can't go duck hunting, 
as we might want to do, at the fish and wildlife refuges? That is 
right. You are not going to go duck hunting at the fish and wildlife 
refuges, as you have normally done, even though you put your bid in and 
you had January 15 for your date to hunt ducks at the refuge. Nope, 
can't do that.

  Transportation, the Department of Transportation is shut down.
  You tell me it is a small portion of the Federal Government. Well, it 
is a

[[Page H584]]

small portion of the budget, but it is 85 percent of the activities of 
the Federal Government that are shut down: Department of the Interior, 
Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security, Department 
of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, and the 
Internal Revenue Service.
  Don't worry, we can't collect taxes. That is a good thing, right? My 
conservative friend says you can't collect taxes, and that is all 
right. No, I want my tax refund, and I can't get that either.
  EPA, there are those who would argue that that is all good. Well, I 
don't think so, not if you are concerned about air and water, the 
ability to swim in the rivers or to drink the water.
  Let's just say you are going out for your first tranche of funding. 
You need SEC approval. Well, you are not going to get it. The 
Securities and Exchange Commission is shut down also.
  Eighty percent or more of the activities of the Federal Government 
are shut down.
  There was a big headline in The New York Times, the failing New York 
Times, about the President and whether he is compromised. Well, I don't 
know. That will prove itself out one way or the other with the Mueller 
investigation and all that is going on.
  But I do know this, that if Putin wanted to harm America, he would 
shut down the American Government. That is precisely what the President 
did. He shut down the American Government for 25 days. What greater 
gift would Putin want than an American Government that is not 
functioning?
  Oh, the military is still there, but the fifth branch of the military 
is the Coast Guard with 40,000-plus Coast Guard members who are out 
there on the water protecting the borders of America. By the way, the 
Coast Guard has confiscated 10 times the amount of drugs that are 
confiscated on the Mexican border. They are working without pay. 
Essential services, yes, they are.
  But the back-office services are not working. They are laid off. 
Contractors who have contracts to get a paycheck from the Department of 
Transportation on the road that they are supposed to be building or 
have built, it is not going to happen.
  It is time for us to open this government. It is time for us to open 
the government and put America back to work. Put the essential services 
back to work.
  The Food and Drug Administration is shut down. Who is checking? Many 
of my colleagues here have young grandchildren, infants. Who is 
checking the quality, the safety, of infant formula? The answer: No 
one.
  Here we are. We are for border security. We Democrats are for border 
security. We have been for more than 20 years now. We voted for walls 
in the past. We voted for improving the security of the border in every 
way possible, and we will continue to do so.
  But to hold America hostage, to hold our government hostage, to hold 
800,000 government employees and 40,000-plus coastguardsmen and -women 
without pay? No way.
  To simply come in at the very last moment in a negotiation that had 
been settled and drop a $5 billion--excuse me, it is $5.7 billion now; 
there seems to have been an escalation--a $5.7 billion border wall on 
our process, it is unconscionable.
  We can open the government. Bills have been passed here, not with the 
help of our Republican friends, but with the new majority. We have 
passed legislation day after day after day to fund the government. Some 
of it is short term, as we did just an hour ago here on the floor, a 
short-term CR to open government until February 1 to get people back to 
work and negotiate, negotiate border security.
  The President wants a wall. Where does he want the wall? What kind of 
a wall does he want: cyclone fence, steel spikes, concrete? Where? For 
what purpose? What is its effectiveness? What is he trying to stop? 
Where is he trying to stop that incursion into America? None of that is 
available today.
  I have been on the Armed Services Committee for 8 years, 9 years now. 
We would not build a hangar for the Air Force unless we knew what its 
purpose was, unless we knew where it was, what it would cost, why it 
was necessary. But the President wants a $5.7 billion slush fund to 
build a wall somewhere along the 1,900 miles of the border.
  Now, a couple of my colleagues were here a few moments ago talking 
about the President's desire to have a national emergency. Well, he 
sure as hell created one. But I think he is talking about those young 
children who are climbing over the fences in diapers. I suppose those 
are the terrorists he is talking about.

                              {time}  1615

  Madam Speaker, let's talk about what he proposes to do about it. He 
would call for a national emergency which gives him--he believes, we 
don't--but he believes the power to appropriate funds. The Constitution 
is very, very clear. There is only one part of our government that has 
the power to appropriate funds. It is us. It is the Congress. But 
apparently the President thinks he can declare a national emergency and 
acquire the appropriation power of Congress.
  What does he intend to appropriate for his purposes of the border 
wall?
  America has had some flooding in some of the districts of some of my 
colleagues that I see here on the floor. We passed the emergency 
legislation to deal with that. California has its droughts, but it also 
has its rain. This is the Oroville Dam. It is not subject to the 
emergency appropriations for disaster recovery. But the levees 
downstream from the Oroville Dam are subject to one of the 
appropriations in the disaster recovery bill. If Oroville Dam had 
broken, within 1 hour a city of 40,000, Oroville, would be under 30 
feet of water.
  The levees downstream from Oroville on the Feather River are in the 
process of being repaired. Further downstream as you get to Sacramento, 
Madam Speaker, the American River and the Sacramento River, major levee 
projects, is the most flood-prone part of America. I know there are 
some friends from the Southeast here who would debate that point. But 
let's just say there is a lot of America that is subject to flooding.
  This is a dangerous one. Money in these supplemental appropriation 
bills for disaster relief is designed to shore up the levees of 
America.
  Now, some folks would argue, yeah, but it is not going to rain this 
year. Maybe. Maybe it makes no difference. But if it does rain, the 
repair of that levee makes all the difference.
  Here is a place that a lot of our friends don't care much about: 
Puerto Rico. In the emergency disaster relief legislation that the 
President wants to raid is the repair of dams just upstream from San 
Juan, Puerto Rico. This is what happened during the hurricanes, and 
that dam spillway needs to be repaired.
  The communities in Texas, California, the Carolinas, Florida, and the 
Gulf Coast don't want this to happen again.
  How do we save them from this ever happening again?
  It is to use the money that we have appropriated for disaster relief 
to repair the levees so that flooding is less likely to happen. But the 
President decides that he is going to create an emergency declaration, 
and he is going to go into the Army Corps of Civil Works programs that 
were allocated as a result of the appropriations from last spring's 
disaster relief legislation and rip $2\1/2\ billion out of those 
appropriations.
  Some of us have reason to suspect with some evidence that he intends 
to go after Puerto Rico and California. It turns out that the projects 
in California may be of interest to some of my Republican friends, 
particularly the minority leader, because one of the projects is Lake 
Isabella just upstream from Bakersfield, California.
  So, Madam Speaker, we say to the President: A, there is no emergency; 
B, the shutdown of government is one of your own making; and C, you 
don't have the power to appropriate money yourself. Particularly, it is 
shameful to take money that we have allocated to protect Americans in 
Florida, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, the Carolinas, and even 
Missouri so that their levees and so that their flood control projects 
can be updated and improved and so the safety of those communities can 
be enhanced.
  Here is what we want: we want government opened. It is inexplicable 
that after 25 days this government is shut

[[Page H585]]

down because the President is demanding $5.7 billion for a border wall 
without even telling us where that is going to be built. Oh, excuse me. 
That is a misstatement. It is going to be built on the Mexican-American 
border.
  Where?
  Is it going to be built where there is a real need?
  What kind of a wall will it be?
  That seems to change every 12 hours because there are no plans worthy 
of our--we are presumably responsible for the taxpayer dollars--
consideration as to where, what the effectiveness would be, what the 
usefulness would be, what the cost would be, or even what the color 
will be.
  Open our government. Pass the legislation in the Senate. The 
President said he will veto it. Okay. Put it on his desk. Let him veto 
it. He already says he is wearing the mantle of the shutdown. Let him 
put on another coat, another mantle of a veto, so that the American 
public knows precisely who is responsible for this shutdown.
  We have done our job here. We have passed the legislation to fund 
this government--all but one department--for the remainder of this 
fiscal year until September 30, 2019. We have done that multiple times 
now, and we have left the issue of the Department of Homeland Security 
in which the issue of the border fence resides on a short-term leash so 
that all of us would be forced to come back to negotiate border 
security.
  Democrats would undoubtedly go for improvements in the ports of 
entry. One out of five cars is not checked at the border. Maybe we 
ought to deal with that. Only a few of the containers arriving at our 
ports are checked. Most are not. Maybe we ought to deal with that. 
Maybe we ought to look at our airports where we know most presumed 
terrorists arrive.
  So what are we doing here?
  We are shutting down--we. Excuse me. We are not shutting down. The 
President is shutting down this government for 25 days.
  I can only imagine the joy in the Kremlin. Consider for a moment Mr. 
Putin, saying: Oh, my God. The American Government is shut down.
  He couldn't do it by himself. Only our President would do it to us.
  We have got things to do here.
  I notice one of my colleagues, Mr. Levin, has arrived, and I know he 
wants to join us on this issue in a few moments. In the meantime, I 
have got a few more things to say.

  To my Republican colleagues who will soon follow me on this floor 
when this hour is done, I can get pretty heated about some things, and 
maybe I have been, but I want them to think about what is actually 
happening here in America and why we are in this situation.
  My Republican colleagues had the power over the last 2 years to build 
any wall they wanted to build anywhere they wanted to build it--
Canadian border, Mexican border. They had the power. They didn't do it. 
Excuse me. That is not right. I think 22 miles of new wall have been 
built in the last 3 years. That is okay. I think the appropriation was 
somewhere less than $50 million for that. Now here we are.
  I would love to hear my Republican colleagues explain to the American 
public how it came about that we are in this situation when they had 2 
years to build whatever wall they thought the President might want to 
build. It didn't happen.
  I heard a wonderful and foolish--a wonderful argument, because it was 
so foolish--that gee whiz, $5.7 billion is just a very small part of 
the total American budget for expenditures.
  That is true. It is a small part. That is $5.7 billion.
  Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion would provide a year and a half of 
funding for all of the tuition for every student at the University of 
California and the 23 State universities in California--more than 1 
million students. Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion is no small amount of 
money.
  How many kids could you educate?
  How much relief could we supply to people who are hungry here in 
America or some part of the world?
  By the way, my Republican friends did create a massive deficit when 
they passed the tax bill last December--a massive deficit. It will 
approach over $900 billion this year. It just about doubled the annual 
deficit with that piece of legislation. I used to say the deficit hawks 
migrate in December. My guess is they are going to come back as we deal 
with the new appropriation bill, and as we do that, I would hope they 
would keep in mind the $5.7 billion for an unspecified wall in an 
unspecified location of an unspecified height to carry on an 
unspecified purpose--5.7 billion.
  So let us continue for a moment. I want to deal with one other thing. 
This is the kind of thing that probably, Madam Speaker, you have to see 
this picture. This picture is worth maybe 500 words, but nevertheless I 
am going to use 250 of them.
  This is a picture of the President of the United States and the 
Governor of California at the Paradise fire. Somewhere around 16, 
17,000 homes were destroyed. Eighty-seven American citizens were killed 
in that fire. An entire community of some 25, 30,000 people is gone. It 
just doesn't exist anymore. It is gone. It is ash. It is rubble.
  Fortunately, Madam Speaker, the American Government, you and I and 
others and those who preceded us, developed a program called the 
Stafford Act which provides the generosity of Americans to help rebuild 
families and communities such as Paradise, California; or Redding, 
California which also suffered a few thousand homes burned and 
destroyed, not nearly as many deaths fortunately.

                              {time}  1630

  So the Stafford Act is what we know as FEMA, Federal Emergency 
Management Agency, the declaration at the county level and at the State 
level of a disaster, then at the Federal level of a disaster, and then 
a presidential declaration of a disaster.
  The Federal Government then steps in and begins to provide funding to 
rebuild, to help the individuals who have lost everything, through the 
Small Business Administration and some direct grants, and to help 
communities put back in place their infrastructure. It is a wonderful 
expression of America's empathy and generosity.
  Two weeks ago my colleague Mr. LaMalfa's constituents, who has the 
district just north of me, many of whom now live and have found housing 
in my area just south of Paradise, were greeted with a tweet from the 
President.
  I am going to paraphrase what the tweet said; I don't have it with me 
right now. It basically said: I will stop all FEMA funding until the 
State of California properly manages its forests.
  Madam Speaker, I must tell you, we have seen tweet after tweet, and 
they range from disgusting to awful and occasionally one that you go: 
``Okay.'' But with this one we said: What in the world are you talking 
about, Mr. President? What are you tweeting about?
  You are going to deny these people--you were there, Mr. President. 
You were there. You saw the devastation.
  We counted the 87 people who died, and they are still sifting through 
the remains of these houses and may find even more. You were there. And 
you say you are going to cut off support until California manages its 
forests properly. You know not what you talk about or tweet about, Mr. 
President.
  The fact of the matter is that the Federal forests which you oversee, 
Mr. President, are the ones that are mismanaged, for a whole variety of 
historic reasons, many of which we have actually made steps to improve 
here in legislation.
  So what is with this man that he would wake up one morning and say: 
No more help from the Federal Government.
  Does he think everything is about leverage? Is that what he thinks, 
that he could use his power, awesome as it is, to leverage something?
  That is precisely what he is doing with the wall. That is precisely 
what he is doing with 25 days of this Nation's government shutdown. He 
is using the citizens of America as leverage. He is using the 800,000 
employees, the Department of Interior, the Department of the Treasury, 
the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard, as 
leverage for his border wall promise.
  It is despicable. It has got to end.
  I need time to cool off.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), my 
colleague, who comes from an extraordinary family.
  And another generation has joined us.

[[Page H586]]

  

  Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Garamendi's 
leadership on this issue.
  I don't think there is--I have not been able to find--another 
democratic nation in our world that shuts down its government over 
policy arguments, wasting $1.2 billion of GDP a week for no purpose.
  Madam Speaker, I want to share a few stories of the impact of this 
senseless shutdown on workers, on people in my home State.
  When we went home on Friday, I organized a meeting at our airport, 
Detroit Metropolitan Airport, with a range of Federal workers who have 
been affected. We just wanted to listen to them and hear their stories.
  We invited Fred Upton and my Democratic colleagues from Michigan, and 
those who traveled home were able to make it.
  I just want to share a few of those stories.
  There is Dave, a biologist at the NOAA research lab in Ann Arbor. He 
has been furloughed, not getting paid. They study the water currents in 
the Straits of Mackinac.
  Line 5, our locally famous pipeline that literally just goes in the 
water in the bottom of the Great Lakes underneath the Mackinac Bridge, 
if that breaks or has a rupture, the research of this group is what 
determines how we would fight that oil spill, which would devastate the 
economy of the Great Lakes.
  That supercomputer is shut off. It is just not working. And if we 
have that, if there was an accident there, the whole Midwest would be 
out of luck.
  They run an experimental weather computer that supplements the basic 
work of the National Weather Service and contributes to our weather 
forecasting. God forbid we have a huge storm somewhere in the United 
States where we get it wrong because they are not doing their work; 
they are not able to work. Just imagine some huge pileup of cars on one 
of our interstates that happens because we are not doing our best 
weather forecasting.
  We heard from Mark, who is the president of his local. He works at 
the EPA lab in Ann Arbor. That lab is shut down.
  They are the ones who determine the fuel efficiency of the cars you 
buy. Our auto companies right now are not able to move their cars 
forward toward the market because they cannot begin to sell a car until 
it has the EPA rating.
  That EPA lab also does enforcement of fossil fuel companies in our 
region. That is not happening.
  We heard from Wanavira, a TSA agent for the last 2\1/2\ years. She is 
a veteran. So many of these people were veterans. She is a veteran. She 
was a Detroit cop for 10 years, and now she is a TSA agent.
  She had to go to the food bank to make sure she had food for her 
family because she is not getting paid. She is being forced to work 
without pay.
  We heard from Jennifer, another TSA agent. She and her husband--I 
forget which was which--one of them is 11 years and one of them is 16 
years working for TSA. Friday was a pay-less payday for the whole 
family, no income coming in at all.

  Her comment was: We have got this week figured out. But next week--
meaning, the week we are in right now--they don't know how they are 
going to put food on the table.
  We heard from Youssef, who works for the Customs service. He said his 
friends think he is on vacation because he has been furloughed by our 
government. But his comment was that he didn't think a vacation 
included calling your mortgage lender and your car loan creditor to beg 
for a month of forbearance. He never thought that he would get rich as 
a public servant, but he also didn't think he would have trouble buying 
formula for his 5-month-old daughter.
  We heard from Angel, a computer programmer for the IRS. She has twin 
girls in college. They just started a new semester. She has no money to 
buy their books. She has no money to buy their other supplies. She is 
another veteran.
  She herself has student loans. She tried to go on edu.gov to figure 
out if she could get a month off. Website closed.
  So we need to work hard to break through to the Secretary of 
Education to work with her to give forgiveness for student loans for 
Federal employees who are affected by this.
  And, finally, I have got to share the story of Tim. It is a 
frightening one because he inspects our planes, and half of them are 
working and half of them are furloughed, and they are not inspecting 
our planes to the extent that they normally do.
  This is no joke. I do not want this shutdown to end because our 
friends finally come to their senses after some horrible thing happens 
to a plane, our cars, or our food supply or something that isn't being 
inspected.
  But Tim is a Navy vet who went to work for General Motors. He lost 
his job in the Great Recession.
  Madam Speaker, in a previous life, I created and ran something called 
No Worker Left Behind. I ran the workforce system of the State of 
Michigan, and I created, essentially, the largest experiment by any 
State in actually putting workers back to school who were unemployed or 
underemployed.
  We put 162,000 Michiganders back to school. This gentleman, Tim, was 
one of them. He studied IT. And out of that program in Oakland County, 
Michigan, he got a job with the FAA. And here he is, working without a 
paycheck now. And so many of his coworkers are furloughed.
  He just wants to serve his country. He has two kids in college, 
again, and they need funding for tuition, books, and so forth.
  Madam Speaker, there is no reason that 820,000 Federal workers are 
forced to work for no pay or are simply off without their livelihood. 
And so many more government contractors are being victimized, and so 
many small businesspeople who run a restaurant or a barbershop near a 
government facility are robbed of their income.
  The economic effects are devastating. There is no reason for it.
  I appreciate Mr. Garamendi's leadership on this. I just wanted to 
come down and join him in calling on our colleagues in the Senate to 
join with us in voting to reopen our government right now. After all, 
we passed what they had passed, what our Republican friends had passed. 
It is not our appropriations, how we would want them, as Democrats. We 
passed their appropriations.
  And in a bipartisan spirit, let's reopen our government, and we can 
have all the negotiations we want over policy matters.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing our 
attention to the real-life problems that these employees have 
personally and that are being created for Americans, whether it is the 
weather or a broken pipeline or an airplane that wasn't inspected. It 
is very important that we all know those things. I thank the gentleman 
for joining us.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Brendan F. Boyle), my colleague, and ask him to please share with us 
his thoughts on the government shutdown.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I applaud the 
gentleman from California for leading on this issue.
  I find that there is a false perception when it comes to Federal 
workers that they are all based in the Washington, D.C., area. We even 
heard some comment to that effect from the President not so long ago.
  In fact, so much of our Federal workforce is spread throughout the 
country. In the Philadelphia metro area that I represent, we have the 
fifth highest number of Federal workers in the country. Furthermore, 
there are all those who actually are impacted in some way by this 
government shutdown, not just the 800,000-plus who are going right now 
without a paycheck.
  My ask is very simple. I want the Senate majority leader to allow a 
vote on the same bill that passed unanimously--unanimously--in the 
Senate just a few weeks ago.
  On that Wednesday, it passed on voice vote unanimously in the Senate. 
We were here on Thursday morning, prepared to vote on that same 
legislation.
  But what happened between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning? 
The President received a great deal of criticism from his base, and 
then suddenly the bill that passed unanimously from the Senate less 
than 24 hours prior was not good enough, and now here we are, stuck in 
the longest government shutdown in American history.

[[Page H587]]

  I also want to make this point, because all of us in government so 
often have gone from crisis to crisis to crisis. This is a real 
systemic problem in which we--all of us, regardless of party--are 
shooting ourselves in the foot and actually reducing now the economic 
projection of our GDP growth over the next year, completely needlessly. 
Almost every Western democracy does not do it this way.
  Once we get beyond the shutdown, a bipartisan group of legislators 
should look for a systemic fix to this and the other sort of major way 
in which we shoot ourselves in the foot, which is when we actually come 
into danger of not raising the debt ceiling and playing really with 
fire.
  These are mechanisms that most other Western democracies don't have. 
They certainly have their partisan fights; only, instead of two 
parties, often, it is more than two major parties.

                              {time}  1645

  So I do think that once we get beyond this crisis, we do need to 
figure out a way to prevent this from ever happening again.
  There are going to be different legislators in these seats, 
inevitably all of us will be gone. There will be the switch of party 
control that has happened multiple times in this century and will 
continue to happen.
  We need to figure out a way to avoid these needless government 
shutdowns in the future that are only costly. They hurt real people who 
are living paycheck to paycheck--people, by the way, who are Democrats, 
Republicans, Independents, and nonvoters. And there is really nothing 
to be gained out of these government shutdowns.
  So let us work together to end this government shutdown. It is 
completely unnecessary. It could end tomorrow if there were willingness 
in the White House and on the Senate side. And then let's also work 
together to ensure that this is not only the longest government 
shutdown in American history, but also the last.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. The gentleman is quite correct about the nature of the 
shutdown and the impact that it has on Americans.
  Can I be optimistic and encourage him to figure out how to stop these 
from ever happening again? And when he grows a very gray head of hair 
and a gray beard, perhaps he will have figured it out. It just hasn't 
happened.
  I was around for the 1995 shutdown. I was the Deputy Secretary at the 
Department of the Interior, number two, and that massive Department 
which I spoke of earlier, the parks, the Fish and Wildlife services, 
all of those organizations--gone.
  At that time, we did not have the requirement that essential services 
would be provided; there was just nobody working. And that went on for, 
I think, 23 days, which until this week was the longest. It was a long 
time ago, and here we are once again and in between. I think there are 
ways.
  I notice many of my colleagues on the Republican side are here, will 
soon have the opportunity to take the floor and will probably debate 
many of the points or disagree with many of the points that I have made 
earlier today. I saw a few jaws clenching, biting down on their teeth, 
just wanting to get in the mix of it.
  Mr. MEADOWS asked for time, and I didn't really want to hear that, 
but the gentleman will have time in just a moment. I am not sure what 
he is going to argue, but I would be pleased to hear why this shutdown 
is good, why it is necessary to keep the government of America, the 
essential parts of the government--not the military. The Medicare 
checks continue to go out, and that is happening. The military, 
Department of Defense, we funded that earlier, and that continues, and 
thankfully so.
  But the Treasury Department, SEC, EPA, Agriculture--I didn't even get 
into agriculture, although I have a $4.5 billion farm gate agricultural 
district. They are hurting.
  The crop checks that they need and the assurance they need to their 
lenders that they will be able to plant their crops when the rainy 
season is over in a few weeks, it is not happening now, so that is 
delayed. And it may be, if it goes much longer, they will miss their 
planting opportunities.
  Food stamps will soon be unavailable, and millions of Americans may, 
under that circumstance, be very, very hungry. Why is it worth it? Why 
is it worth it?
  Why don't we start up government, pass the legislation that is over 
in the Senate, encourage, cajole, browbeat a few Senators to pass the 
legislation, put it on the President's desk, and then he can have that 
mantle of shutting down the government once again very clearly?
  We will deal with border security. We have over the years, and 
recently we have done that and we will do it again. But that is a 
negotiating process. We negotiate on virtually everything around here.
  I have yet to get my way; but then, I am one of seven children. I 
learned very, very early, I don't get my way very often. I would like 
to participate in that process of give-and-take.
  And for proper comprehensive border security, we know--I won't speak 
names. Perhaps that will get me in trouble here. But more than one of 
you sitting there and I have had conversations about border security, 
about immigration and how we could solve that problem. That is going to 
take some time, and surely there are places for a fence or a wall or 
concrete or steel or whatever, those places for improved ports of 
entry, more personnel.
  I haven't even started to talk about the children that were 
separated. That will get me off on another thing that wouldn't be 
helpful now. But that takes time, and you and I know that we need to 
solve that problem.
  So let's start our government today, tomorrow. Let's prove to the 
world that it really is an American Government--not shut down but 
operating, all of its good and all of its extraordinary work and, 
occasionally, the mistakes that it makes. But it is not operating now.
  And then let's take the time over the next 30 days, 60 days, whatever 
you want to put on it, to negotiate real border security, dealing with 
the immigration issues, dealing with DACA, dealing with fences and 
border ports of entry, the kind of technology that is necessary to know 
what is inside that container, the kind of technology that is 
necessary, and the kind of personnel necessary to check not one of five 
cars but every car and every truck and every plane and every ship. We 
ought to do that. But right now we are in the heat of this, and we are 
not getting anywhere.
  So as he takes the floor in the next hour, I will listen and our team 
will listen. I would ask him to encourage his colleagues, our 
colleagues in the Senate, to pass the legislation that has been sent to 
them, which is actually the Republican appropriations bills, take a 
very significant major step towards reopening government, and then 
let's take the time to thoughtfully, properly address a very complex, 
very long-lasting problem in America: immigration, border security. I 
know most of them, and I think that is what they would really like 
to do.

  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to direct their remarks 
to the Chair and avoid engaging in personalities toward the President.

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