January 24, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 15 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Page H1189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

  (Mr. BEYER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I received an email Friday night from a 
young lawyer I know in northern Virginia. I met him last year when he 
had just hung out his shingle for a solo practice.
  He was desperate. His one big client is a Federal Government 
contractor who told him he would not be paid for December or for 
January because of the government shutdown.
  He wrote me because he had just received an eviction notice from his 
landlord: come up with the rent for January by Wednesday, noon, or face 
immediate eviction.
  I connected him with our local government office on emergency 
assistance. He got some meaningful help. He reached out to a few 
nonprofits and got some more. He was only $800 short yesterday, and the 
landlord agreed to wait another month.
  Yes, the shutdown has left 800,000 Federal employees without the 
money for life's necessities, but it is also harming American citizens 
far and wide, cruelly and unnecessarily, victims of the inevitable 
multiplier effects of a Federal Government failing its fiscal 
responsibility.
  This should be the last ever Federal shutdown. We must never again 
give a President the power to hold the most powerful and best managed 
government hostage to his whims, obsessions, and political knavery.
  Mr. President, let our people go.

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