Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. We are not changing a penny of the President's pay. What we are saying is, in the event of a government shutdown, he will be treated the same way other Federal employees are treated and be treated in the same way we are treated. He can determine if he wants to challenge this in a court of law. We hope we don't ever face this. So we are not in any way changing his salary. We hope never to have to use this.

Mrs. BOXER. No, I am not. I will reiterate again what I said, which is this: We do not increase or decrease the President's pay.

Mrs. BOXER. Can I finish? I let you talk. Now I think I have a turn. I don't have a legal degree, my friend has. It is common sense. It seems to me it is a question of fairness. Those of us who are responsible for keeping this government open--

Mrs. BOXER. Then I will finish this thought. We are responsible to keep this government open. If we fail to do that, we ought to be punished. I am going to make a unanimous consent request at this time, and I understand there is an objection. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I have just been told a Republican colleague objects to this. I don't understand why. I don't think it is a constitutional objection. I don't know the reason.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to make my request.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. BOXER. I want an answer, please, to my question: Can people object to a unanimous consent request without saying who they are, No. 1? And No. 2, what is the parliamentary procedure here?

Mrs. BOXER. So it is the Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, who objects to the bill we have that would say we don't get paid in the case of a shutdown; is that correct? Senator Coburn is objecting to that?

Mrs. BOXER. Thank you.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I want say I object to the Vitter-Toomey bill. I am not going to pay China before I pay people.

Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee be discharged from--

Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent to speak to make a unanimous consent request.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much. Senator Reid has told me I have 30 minutes, so I will start that at this time. We are in a very difficult time right now because we are getting out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. If we go back and look at the headlines when our President was inaugurated, we see the pace of job loss and we see what happened to credit and we see what happened to the auto industry and we see what happened to the stock market--we eventually lost about 50 percent from its highs. We are now in a situation where we have this economic recovery starting, but the jobs are not coming as fast as we want. We don't want to do anything which threatens that economic recovery, which threatens our families and threatens the middle class. This is not the time to hurt the middle class. What we see in Wisconsin is the middle class finally saying to the Governor there: Look, be fair to us. We are willing to give up pay, we are willing to pay more for our benefits, but don't destroy our ability to have a say in our lives. So as this economic recovery plays out, we have to deal with deficits that have come about because of this terrible recession, fewer revenues coming in to the Federal Government, more people calling on programs to help them with unemployment insurance and food stamps and things they need to stay alive. We have to deal with our deficit, there is no question about that. We have to do it like grownups. We have to do it with common sense. We don't want to take a meat ax to this recovery and wind up losing jobs, jobs, jobs. This last election was all about jobs. I was out there, so I can tell you. My Republican opponent, every day, said: Senator Boxer, where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? That was a legitimate question. I answered it this way: It is taking too long to get these jobs back where they should be, but I am going to fight every day for jobs. When I see a proposal that will threaten jobs, I am going to talk about it. I am going to get to the Republican proposal for the rest of this year, the 2011 budget proposal, which experts such as Mark Zandi, a Republican expert who advised Republican candidates--he advised John McCain. He said, as well as Goldman Sachs, that if you pass the Republican budget plan, you endanger 700,000 jobs. So what do we do? We have to cut spending, yes. We have to do it wisely. We have to sit together and discuss it, not say: My way or the highway; here is the bill, don't talk to me. I think it is important, as we hear the majority leader address his comments to the Democratic side, to address some comments to the Republican side. When George Bush was elected President, President Bill Clinton handed him a $236 billion budget surplus. I am proud to say I served at that time, and I voted for the Democratic budget, the Clinton budget. What did it accomplish? Quite a bit. Not only a balanced budget but a surplus. There were those on the other side calling for an amendment to the Constitution for a balanced budget. We said: We don't need an amendment; we just need to balance the budget in a wise way, and we did it. We cut out unnecessary spending, but we invested where it created jobs. Guess what. We said to the upper income people of $1 million or more: You have to pay your fair share. They were willing and able to do it, and we created not only surpluses in the Federal Government but 23 million new jobs. Let me say that again. We created a surplus--not only a balanced budget surplus but 23 million new jobs. Now the Republicans take over, and when George Bush leaves office, he created 1 million jobs in 8 years, compared to 23 million. Guess what. He left us a $1.3 trillion deficit. I say to my friends here, he left the wars off budget, so it was even way higher than that. He didn't put the two wars on the budget. President Obama, last year, created more jobs than George Bush did. President Obama created, in 2010, 1.1 million new jobs. So the new jobs under President Obama in 2010 equal the net jobs of George Bush after 8 years. President Obama inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from George Bush, who created that from a surplus. It is important we follow this. George Bush created 1 million jobs net compared to 23 million jobs under Bill Clinton, and President Obama inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression--700,000 jobs a month lost, panic on Wall Street, you name it, the auto industry going out. We would have been the only leader in the industrialized world not to have an auto industry. It is fair to say things have stabilized. The auto industry had the best year in a long time. The money we loaned to the banks has been paid back. But we have more to do. The deficit is up to $1.6 trillion now because the wars are now on the budget, because we still haven't made up for the revenues we lost, and the jobs are coming back too slowly. This is where we stand. We have to pass a budget for the remainder of this year, and Democrats are saying let's do it wisely. We will cut, cut, cut, and we have a list of cuts we can go over. We cut $40 billion from the President's 2011 budget. The Republicans cut $100 billion from the President's budget. So, surely, between the 40 we cut and the $100 billion they cut, we can meet and solve this problem. I would like us to do it right now--sit down in good faith and get it done and scratch any of the cuts that hurt our children, scratch the cuts that hurt our women's health, scratch the cuts that are essentially political--I will go into those later--and come up with the cuts that don't threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs. Here is the deal. There is still talk and fear about a government shutdown. Every time we think we have passed the point, there comes another article. Today in the Washington Post there is this article. I ask unanimous consent to have this printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. It says this on the front page: ``With shutdown looming, GOP freshmen are wild cards.'' When you ask the Republican Members of the House where this is going, they say they don't know. The government could shut down; we don't know. Later, I will go into what happened the last time the government shut down. I will not do that at this moment. I talked to Senator Casey, my good colleague and a great leader in the Senate, about an anomaly in the law that protects Members of Congress from getting their pay shut down in the case of a government shutdown, when the vast majority of Federal workers will not get paid. He and I agree there is something wrong with this system. It is not fair. If we fail to keep this government operating, which is our basic responsibility, to keep the checks flowing to Social Security recipients, to veterans with disabilities, to make sure we don't harm the private sector contractors and workers--if we don't do that, we don't deserve to get our pay. We put together a bill that says, in the case of a government shutdown, Members of Congress and the President must be treated the same way as other Federal employees--and, by the way, not get back our pay retroactively. It touched a chord with several colleagues. We have the bill written, and we have sent it to the Republican side and the Democratic side. My understanding is, it has passed the Democratic side via hotline, and the Republicans are looking at it now. The cosponsors are Senators Boxer, Casey, Manchin, Tester, Nelson of Nebraska, Bennet, Warner, Wyden, Coons, Harkin, Hagan, Menendez, Stabenow, Merkley, and Rockefeller. We feel we have the support of the people. We are hopeful we will avert a government shutdown because it is bad for our country, bad for our families, bad for our States, and there is no need to have one. But if we do have one, we don't want to have Members of Congress go home, get their pay, and not even have to pay a price or sacrifice or anything else while other families are sacrificing. We hope our Republican friends will agree with us and, if they do, we are going to send it over tonight. We are not asking unanimous consent now, but we will at 4 o'clock. If they can go forward, we will send this over to Speaker Boehner in the hopes it will breeze through the House. In case of a government shutdown, which we hope will be averted, we hope we are treated the same as Federal employees and that we are not getting our paychecks when others are not. With that, I will yield the floor to Senator Casey for as long as he would like.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, how much time remains?

Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for working hard on this piece of legislation. It is very simple. No budget, no pay. That is it. We cannot have no function of government more important than passing a budget and keeping us going. The people have a right to expect that we will do our work. Social Security checks, if there is a shutdown, may not arrive on time. Veterans may not receive the benefits they have earned. Passports may not be issued. Superfund sites will not be cleaned up, and those are dangerous. Oil wells should be inspected. We see what happens when we do not do the functions of government; we pay, our people pay. Export licenses must be granted. Troops must be paid. Failing to keep the government open because of politics or because no one wants to listen to the other side and meet in the middle is a failure. All we are saying is treat Members of Congress and the President the same as other Federal employees. And no retroactive, back pay either. The bigger issue is the one I touched on; that is, what is the right way to approach this deficit problem. Clearly, we have to do it responsibly. Clearly, the American people want us to reduce this deficit. I want to reduce it. I have to say very proudly, not only did we reduce it under Bill Clinton but we had surpluses. This is the only time we ever had a surplus--a Democratic administration. OK? That is it. I do not need lectures from the other side of the aisle. Show me a time when they balanced the budget. They do not have one to show me. They can show me the record under George W. Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush: deficits, deficits, deficits, deficits. And under George Bush, job losses. Over the entire 8 years, there were 1 million net new jobs compared to 23 million under Bill Clinton. What a record. Let's do this the way we know it should be done, which is a balanced approach. Cut spending where it is wasteful, where it is useless, where it is dumb to spend money. Spend it where it makes sense--on our kids. The things my colleagues in the House did without one Democratic vote are shocking. The experts tell us we could lose between 700,000 and 1 million jobs--between 700,000 and 1 million jobs--if we go with their package. They need to sit and talk with us. Let's reason together. They cut $100 billion off the President's budget. We have already cut $40 billion. Let's meet in the middle. But let's not threaten as many as 1 million jobs. Moody's estimates their budget would destroy 700,000 jobs. Goldman Sachs says their plan would cut economic growth by as much as 2 percent by the end of the year. It is inconceivable, after they ran around in this last election saying: Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs?-- that is all I heard. And it was a good point. But it is inconceivable they would turn their backs on jobs and now focus on the deficit as if that is the only issue we have to worry about. Again, when President Obama took office, the economy was heading off a cliff. I will never forget the Republican Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, looking straight in my eyes--and that was hard because he is 7 feet tall and I am a little under 5 feet; he is not 7 feet tall, but to me he looks like 7 feet tall--and saying: Senator, capitalism is on the brink of collapse. We may see the collapse of capitalism. I remember back to the debates when one of my Republican colleagues suggested nationalizing the banks. President Obama said: No, we are not going there. We are going to have to figure out a way. Yes, we did lend them money and it was an awful vote and I hated every minute of it. The banks paid back every penny. The auto industry--oh, my colleagues said, we cannot help the auto industry. Oh, yes, we did. We did not want to be the only Western Power that did not have an automobile industry. It is important to our national defense. We stabilized the auto industry, we have stabilized the financial industry, we approved tax cuts for the middle class, and we made investments in infrastructure. Yes, it is true, George Bush took a big surplus and turned it into a $1.3 trillion deficit. The deficit now is $1.6 trillion as we struggle out of this economic mire and put the wars on the budget. By the way, ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over 10 years could get us $1.1 trillion. I have not heard any of my Republican friends go there at all with that. We need to do that. They are just looking at one small part of the budget. I have to tell you from my heart what I think they did over there. They cut $100 billion off the President's budget. We cut $41 billion off the President's budget. This is what they did: I believe they used deficit reduction as an excuse to carry out political vendettas against the Environmental Protection Agency. They not only took a meat axe to that budget, but they ordered the EPA--they said they cannot protect families from pollution from cement plants. They cannot do that. That means our people will be exposed to mercury. They said they cannot enforce the Clean Air Act when it comes to carbon pollution. Imagine, they do not dare just come here and say: Let's repeal the Clean Air Act. They go around the back door using the budget as a political vendetta tool. They said: Let's stop our improvements in food safety. I have to say, not one person in my home State ever came up to me--I do not care if they are Republican, Independent, or Democrat--and said: Senator, the two things I want when you get back is to give me dirty air and give me poisoned food. I need more contamination in my food. I cannot believe this. We just did a great bill, and they slashed the money for food safety. Tell me how that makes America stronger. Tell me, when we know how many people die of illness from contaminated food. They did a political vendetta against family planning, which is going to lead to more abortions if it goes through. It is not going to go through because we are not going to let them stop ensuring that American women in this day and age--they are not going to tell my people in California they cannot have access to contraception. Yet they cut every penny from Planned Parenthood in a clear, I believe, unconstitutional political vendetta. Madam President, 5 million men and women get the services of Planned Parenthood. They get tested for STDs, AIDS, cancer screenings--all of that. And a lot of women use Planned Parenthood clinics as their first line of health care. This is 2011. We are not going back to the dark days when women died because they did not have health care. We cannot. We cannot do it. Drop the political vendettas. Come to the table and let's find the cuts that make sense. Put a little more faith in your Democratic colleagues since we are the only ones who balanced the budget and created a surplus and 23 million jobs. I do not need to hear lectures about that. They can talk all they want. The last balanced budget was under Bill Clinton. The last surplus was under Bill Clinton. The last great economic growth was under Bill Clinton. Our President gets it. That is why he tackles this deficit over a period of time and gets it down to $600 billion by 2015. Maybe we can do more. I am ready to do more, and we will do more if we have an economic recovery. We will not if we lose another 1 million jobs and have another 1 million people getting help from us rather than having jobs and keeping their homes. What other vendettas? This one, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Somebody said that 4 hours of the war in Afghanistan would be equal to the cut they made to public broadcasting--4 hours of the war in Afghanistan. America should be proud of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We go toe to toe with the BBC. Great Britain funds 100 percent of the BBC. We fund 15 percent of public broadcasting. But now they want to zero it out. A vendetta against Elmo. They have a vendetta against health reform. The President is right. In our bill we say the States can do another plan. Let's push that up to 2014. Do not go back to the days when 62 percent of all bankruptcies were linked to a health care crisis. Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, they have a vendetta against clean energy. I guess they want to keep dependence on foreign oil. I do not and my people do not. We do not enjoy $5-a-gallon gas, which is where it is heading maybe because of the unrest in the Middle East. We need alternatives--clean cars, cars that go 50, 60 miles a gallon or do not need any gas at all. Oh, they cut that. They cut Head Start. Our little kids will not have Head Start. What are they doing? It makes no sense. Every dollar we put into early childhood education saves $10. What are they doing? And Pell grants. There are so many other ways to proceed. Do you know, if we just looked at the tax loopholes given to corporations who ship jobs overseas, it is over $140 billion over 10 years? Let's take a look at that. Let's take a look at the billionaires. Why do we have to ask little kids to give up a slot in Head Start and get that Head Start they need? Why do we have to ask our teenagers to give up on going to college? That is what their budget does for no reason at all. Let's avert a government shutdown by coming together. I am willing to move in their direction. They have to be willing to move to mine. Again, they cut $100 billion off the President's budget. We cut $40 billion. Let's meet in the middle.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 30 more seconds, and then I will yield to my friend.

Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, in conclusion, let's meet in the middle. Let's put this 2011 budget issue behind us quickly. Let's move on to long-term deficit reduction and job creation. If we fail, let's not get paid for our work here. This afternoon I will be back to ask unanimous consent: No budget, no pay. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 388 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time and passed; that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; and that any statements relating to the matter be printed in the Record.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, in 1 minute or less, I thank the occupant of the Chair very much for his strong cosponsorship of this bill, along with other colleagues. Basically, we are saying that if we fail to keep this government open, or to lift the debt ceiling, we Members of Congress should not receive our pay. It is pretty straightforward. I thank Senator Coburn. He had objected earlier. He backed off of his objection. He will make his own case for the Record. He is making the case that Federal employees, such as nurses, or Superfund cleanup workers, or Border Patrol agents never get 1 penny of reimbursement or back pay. I think that is, in essence, unfair, if we have a government shutdown, to put it on the backs of the middle-class people who don't want to stay home; they want to work. I am glad he is allowing this to move forward. We certainly will now ask our friends on the other side of the Capitol and Speaker Boehner to take this bill up post haste and get it going. Let's avoid a shutdown but make it clear that if there is one, we are going to take our lumps just like other Federal workers. I hope this will help avert a shutdown. I yield the floor.