Tim Kaine

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on November 6, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room SR-418, of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 6, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``America COMPETES: Science and the U.S. Economy.''

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on November 6, 2013, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Transportation: A Challenge to Independence for Seniors.'' The Committee will meet in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building beginning at 2:15 p.m.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on November 6, 2013, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``One Year Later: Examining the Ongoing Recovery from Hurricane Sandy.''

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 6, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 6, 2013, at 10:30 a.m.

Mr. KAINE

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I strongly support the nomination of Pattie Millett, of Alexandria, VA, to the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Ms. Millett is extremely well qualified for this position, in terms of her legal expertise, experience, character, and integrity. The Senate should invoke cloture on and confirm her nomination. As one of the Nation's leading appellate lawyers, Ms. Millett possesses remarkable legal expertise in this area. She has litigated appellate cases extensively, including 32 arguments and many briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, and 35 arguments spanning 12 of the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal (including the DC Circuit). Her cases have spanned the spectrum of legal issues that the DC Circuit confronts, including constitutional law, administrative law, civil and criminal procedure, commercial disputes, national security, and civil rights. Ms. Millett also has many years of experience in the public sector, having worked in the Office of the Solicitor General for over 11 years, and in the Appellate Section, Civil Division of the Department of Justice for 4 years. It's important to note that her service to the United States was bipartisan, spanning both Democratic and Republican administrations. Ms. Millett graduated from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 1988 and she clerked for the Honorable Thomas Tang of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for 2 years. I believe Ms. Millett possesses the character and integrity necessary for a nomination of this caliber. She is an active member of Aldersgate United Methodist Church, where she teaches Sunday school and visits the hospitalized and home-bound. For many years she has also participated in the Hypothermia Homeless Shelter, which operates during the winter months on the Route 1 corridor in Alexandria, preparing meals. As a military spouse, Ms. Millett and her family have also sacrificed for our Nation. Ms. Millett's husband was deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, so she brings a unique understanding of veterans' issues and the stress of deployment on soldiers and their families. I know there have been issues raised regarding the caseload for the DC Circuit. These issues do not concern me. With respect to the size of the DC Circuit, Congress removed a seat under the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. Today, three of the DC Circuit's eleven existing seats are vacant. And three other circuits currently have lower caseloads per active judge than the DC Circuit. Yet, just this year, the Senate confirmed nominees to two of these other circuit courts--the Eighth and Tenth Circuit. As Governor of Virginia, I chose two members of the Supreme Court of Virginia and have thought deeply about qualities that make for a strong appellate judge. I believe Ms. Millett is superbly qualified for a position on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. I hope the Senate invokes cloture on her nomination today, and that she is confirmed for a position on the DC Circuit.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, as chairman of the Near East and South and Central Asia subcommittee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today I cosponsored S. 653, a bill that authorizes the President to appoint a Special Envoy within the Department of State to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia. Unfortunately, there is a wide range of persecuted minorities who too often are victims of discrimination, marginalization, and violence in the region. Coptic Christians in Egypt, Baha'i in Iran, Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, and Christians in Syria are examples of communities and faiths that suffer intolerance. I believe that all peoples deserve equal treatment, regardless of faith, and I hope the appointment of a Special Envoy within the State Department will help protect those universal rights.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to say a few words to applaud the Senate bipartisan leadership for the ongoing negotiation to do what the American public wants us to do, to reopen our government, affirm the fiscal soundness of the United States, and finally begin a true dialog of a budget conference to find a path forward for 2014. This is what America wants us to do. They want us to work together in the Senate--Democrats and Republicans. They want the Senate and the House to work together. They want us to stop the foolish shutdown that has needlessly hurt individuals, our communities, our economy, and our prestige. Now is the time to do that and then begin the repair work that is ahead. The deal that has been worked on by Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and others is a bipartisan deal. As the Presiding Officer knows, that is necessary. The American public has provided a divided Congress--one House with a Democratic majority and one House with a Republican majority. If we are to get over this short-term hump--and indeed, if we are to get over the next hump through a budget negotiation--it is not going to be just one side dictating the terms. Those who thought they would shut down the government and dictate terms were wrong. Those who thought they could threaten default on the debt and dictate terms were wrong. When the American public has put one party in control of each House, the only way to find an agreement and come forward is for people to listen to each other and find compromise. Again, we are not there yet. We hope we will be voting later in the day, but I think it is appropriate to say we appreciate the leadership of Senator Reid and Senator McConnell and finding--in a very challenging time--a path forward to do what is right for the country. We encourage those efforts and look forward to being on the floor later today to have a vote and send the appropriate signal, that the U.S. Government is open and the full faith and credit of this wonderful Nation stands unblemished. If we do that today, the real work, in some ways, now begins. This whole exercise in brinkmanship could have been avoided if Congress had, in March, done what we in the Senate have been asking them to do and started a budget conference. I have spoken about this many times on the floor--probably with a little bit of extra passion because I serve on the Budget Committee. Being on the Budget Committee has been an education for this naive freshman Senator. After working with others to pass a budget at 5 a.m. in the morning on March 23, I sort of believed that somehow government 101 would next say we would then take the Senate budget and the House budget--that indeed were very different documents--and put them immediately into a conference where we could find a compromise and move forward. That is what was contemplated by the 1974 Budget Act under which Congress operates. What was odd is that after we did all of that work to pass the budget again and again and again, an effort to begin a budget conference was blocked. That was surprising. We would not be in a shutdown if we had done it in March. Nevertheless, we are at a place where we are going to fix the brinkmanship and then engage in the kind of dialog between the House and Senate so we can move forward. Again, if there is to be a deal--and budget deals have proven to be elusive in this body in recent years--make no mistake. It is going to have to be a bipartisan deal. I feel very strongly about some issues, but the deal will certainly not be to my liking in all particulars. The House may feel strongly about some issues. They can't expect a deal that will be--in all particulars--to their liking. A divided government means we have to listen to each other, negotiate, find common ground, and that is what the American public has sent us to do. In conclusion, I am proud of the Senate budget. What a budget conference will be is essentially an opportunity for each House to put their best document on the table and say: This is a budget that will be good for America. Having worked with my colleagues on the Senate Budget Committee in January, February, and March, I am proud of the budget we have passed. I have done a lot of budgets. I did many budgets as a city councilman and a mayor in Richmond. I worked on budgets as the Governor of Virginia. We won some awards in our State for our fiscal acumen, and I think I know something about budgets. What I know about the Senate budget and believe very strongly is this: If that Senate budget were to be put in place today, without changing one comma, without changing one apostrophe, it would be good for the Nation. The Senate budget we passed--fully aware there would be a conference, fully aware there would be negotiation and compromise-- nevertheless, the Senate budget we passed does a lot of good. It is a budget that is focused primarily on economic growth--growing our economy, adding jobs. The best anti-deficit strategy is a growing economy. In putting our budget together, we focused on issues such as infrastructure and educational investments that would help grow the economy. We focused on the protection of key services, recognizing we have to deal with expense items. There are key services Americans depend on, so we reject the across-the-board, slash-and-burn of the sequester and instead find targeted ways where we can find savings that would nevertheless protect key services. The budget expresses a willingness to reform--to reform the way we spend, to reform programs such as Medicare, where cost growth has been so significant, to reform Defense spending in smart ways that will keep our Nation safe, as well as, yes, to reform tax policy, the tax expenditures, which is the polite way of saying loopholes, deductions, credits, exemptions--all of those tax expenditures that turn our revenue collection system into a kind of swiss cheese. We need to do tax reforms as well. If we are going to reform on the spending side, we need to reform tax expenditures as well. Finally, the Senate budget offers us a path forward to credibly reduce the deficit and to replace the foolish, nonstrategic, across- the-board sequester cuts that have harmed Virginia and have harmed the Nation. That is not to say there will not be cuts. But if we are going to have cuts, they should be done with a strategic sense. Any CEO, any Governor would say that cuts should be strategic rather than across the board. So I am very proud of our Senate budget, and I look forward to having an intense dialogue between Senate and House Members where we put the two budgets on the table, where finally a conference can begin, where the American public can see the different choices the House and Senate make, and thereby be educated about the choices. I think that if we sit in a conference and we have the two budgets on the table, folks will see the many virtues of the Senate approach. But all Senators involved in those discussions--and we don't know yet who they will be--as proud as they are, as proud as I am about the Senate budget--we will have to go into this with the full knowledge that we will not find the kind of deal going forward without being willing to listen, dialogue, and compromise. I will conclude by saying it seems as though compromise is sort of a dirty word these days. Yet we have to reflect back that our very form of government depends upon it. The three branches, the checks and balances between the branches, assume a degree of dialogue and compromise. The legislative branch itself, with two Houses--it would have been easier with one--but with two Houses, on matters such as these, the need to get bills and legislation and budgets through both Houses requires compromise. So I am glad we are finally entering that stage of a true budget conference--an opportunity to dialogue and compromise, which we should have done last spring. We can enter into it with pride that the Senate budget is a strong document that will help the economy, but also enter into it fully realizing that this short-term deal is not going to be solved by a House or a Senate plan that just had the support of one party. It had to get solved with a bipartisan deal that originated, thankfully, in the Senate. We will have to be willing, in order to find a long-term budget solution, to bring that same spirit to the table. With that, Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on October 16, 2013, at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to deliver a status report on what the government shutdown has meant to Virginia this week. I gave one last week, and I am back on the floor to share some additional news. I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Florida. I will talk about some similar effects. These effects are felt everywhere. It is not just furloughed employees; it is contractors, it is local communities and nonprofits, and it is the housing market. Let me talk a bit about Virginia. Some of the pages might have been on the floor last week when I talked about a tiny community in Virginia, Chincoteague, which is a barrier island off the eastern shore of Virginia. It is not the place you might think of when you think about where Federal shutdown effects would be felt in a very specific way. But Chincoteague's economy is oriented around tourism. There is a national seashore and national wildlife refuge there, adjacent to Chincoteague Island, and so these few thousand people over the years have built up an economy that is hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery stores, drive-ins, and other shops for visitors. The fall is a very busy time. The island gets about 1.5 million visitors a year, and they are coming to the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Seashore. On October 1, when government closed down the seashore and wildlife refuge closed down, the visitors have stopped coming. All those businesses, all those small mom-and-pops--I can see the faces of Tommy and Donna, and Jack Tarr, who is the mayor, and Glenn and Jane, my friends over there--they have called me to say: We are hit so hard because this is a busy time for us and we are closed down. Last weekend there was a huge festival. There is a historic lighthouse on the island, and they have been working for 6 years to restore it. The opening was last week, and they were expecting hundreds or even thousands of visitors. They had to cancel it because it is on the wildlife refuge. This weekend there was another big festival. Some of you might have read the book ``Misty of Chincoteague,'' which is about the Chincoteague Island ponies. Children read this book about ponies, probably ponies that came there from Spain, swim across the sound twice a year to Chincoteague, get shots, get inoculated. In the spring, some are sold for population control so they do not overrun the island. This weekend was the fall pony roundup. They had to cancel it because the wildlife refuge is closed. It is not just a tourism event. It hurts all the businesses, but it is more than that. It is a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department that keeps every home and business on Chincoteague Island safe. They do not have a fire department other than the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department. They have two fundraisers a year. This weekend was one of them. They have canceled it. The volunteer fire department put up on their Web site: ``The fall pony roundup is closed because of the childish and idiotic antics of our Government.'' The other main economy in Chincoteague is NASA. There is a facility at Wallops Island, 5 miles away, and over 80 percent of the thousand employees and contractors who work at NASA, 5 miles from Chincoteague Island, are furloughed. So you pull the guts out of the tourism economy, which this community relies on, and you pull the guts out of NASA, which the community relies on--this community has been devastated by the government shutdown, and why? Why? Mark Wright is a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army who served in the Army for 23 years, including service tours in Iraq--a very solid veteran. We are so proud. One out of eight Virginians is a veteran--an amazing number of people. When he retired, he got a job at the Pentagon as a civilian, a DOD civilian. He got that job earlier this year. Mark Wright was furloughed earlier this year because of the sequester. He has a wife and two kids in elementary school. He was furloughed, days off work, less pay, he got through that furlough. Then October 1, furloughed again. So this veteran who served his country, put himself in harm's way, and fought in theaters of battle more than once has been furloughed twice this year. Mark Wright and his wife and children live in an apartment in Stafford County--south of DC. They wanted to buy a home for the first time in their lives. They are in the housing market. They decided they can't buy a home now because he doesn't know if he will have a paycheck to make a mortgage payment. He will be lucky enough to keep making the rent payment every month. It hurts their family, but it also hurts the real estate market in Stafford County. Just this week it was reported that foreclosures in Virginia are up 52 percent from August to September, the biggest jump since the start of the recession because of the effect of sequester and these kinds of foolish antics, as the volunteer fire department described. So what Mark Wright and his family are asking is why; why are we doing this? I had an employee roundtable with about seven furloughed employees and contractors on Wednesday afternoon in my office. They shared their anxieties about their own finances. They shared their own anxieties about having kids at home and getting a paycheck and what it would mean to them. I said to one participant: Tell me about your family. He said: I am lucky. I don't have a family. Then he caught himself and he said: I wish I was married and had a family, but for now when I am not getting a paycheck and I don't know whether I will get a paycheck, I am lucky I don't have a family. This was a DOD civilian who was a West Point grad who served as an Active-Duty Army officer for 10 years and fought overseas. Others talked about how it felt to be kicked around just because they are trying to serve their country. One said: I have gone on unemployment. I never wanted to go on unemployment, but I have to for my family. Even those who were financially secure said: I am looking elsewhere for a job. Why would I put myself and my family through this? I have other skills. Maybe I can't serve the public anymore if the Congress is not going to back me. Why are we doing this to these people? A Virginia business that I am going to leave nameless called me the other day. They have thousands of employees in Virginia. The shutdown caused their weekly revenue to fall by 85 percent immediately. They are still doing work, and they are still being told--because they are contractors--that they will get paid, they are just not told when they will get pay. But they are paying for office rent and they are paying for utilities and they are paying salaries of employees and they are paying monthly health insurance premiums. They don't know when they are going to get paid, but they are having to write checks to others every day. The owner of the business said: A few more weeks of this, and we will be bankrupt and hundreds of people will lose their jobs. Why are we doing this to these businesses? Yesterday the Presiding Officer was with me in a hearing before the Armed Services Committee, and a woman by the name of Jo Ann Rooney was nominated to be Under Secretary of the Navy. I asked her a question about morale in the Navy and the Pentagon now. Her answer was interesting. Jo Ann Rooney had been working in the Pentagon for quite a while and then left 1 year ago to be president of a women's college. So she has been away from the Pentagon for 1 year. Now she is back in the Pentagon as a nominee to be Under Secretary of the Navy. Her name is pretty important in Virginia. She said the difference in the Pentagon and with the Navy folks she was working with from when she left 1 year ago to today is completely stark. In the year that she has been gone, the furloughs hit and now the shutdown has hit. She said she is walking around the halls and looking at how people are responding. They feel like they are not supported when they are doing this important mission. She had one question: Why are we doing this to people who are working for the U.S. Navy whom we count on to protect us every day. Why? We know, as the Senator from Florida said, that the House pushed this shutdown through unwillingness to have a budget conference. We passed a budget in March. We wanted to sit down and find a budget compromise with a very different House budget. We were going to have to compromise and do that, but Senators and House Members have blocked a conference. With no conference, we don't get a compromise. With no compromise, we don't get a budget. With no budget, the government shuts down. They pushed this through a shutdown and only after the shutdown have they said: All right. Let's talk. Yesterday they revealed a new plan in the House. Their plan was we need to make sure we don't default on our debt, but after 11 days of shutdown, we just want to keep the government shut down. We will make sure we pay our foreign creditors, but we want to keep the government shut down. Why? Why cause this pain? Why hurt the economy? Why push businesses to the brink of bankruptcy? Why harm the housing market? Why degrade and devalue public servants, especially those who are veterans? Why jeopardize cities and towns such as Chincoteague? Why hurt nonprofits such as the Chincoteague Island Volunteer Fire Department? Why leave families vulnerable to unemployment and force them to go on unemployment for the first time in their lives? Why cause all this pain? No one in this country is benefiting from the U.S. government being shut down. So why is the House continuing to insist that this government remain closed? I am continually reminded of the words by the Founder of the Republican Party 150 years ago at Gettysburg--Abraham Lincoln. At the end of that amazing speech, he resolved, and we resolved, that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth, not for a year, not for a month, not for a week, not for a day, not for an hour, not for a minute, and not for a second. Why can't the House agree to open the government and stop all this unnecessary pain? I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to talk about the need to reopen government--and not to reopen government in a piecemeal way, one bit this week and then another bit next week, which seems to be the newest gambit on the table. We need to reopen the government because the government of this country should have never shut down in the first place. Few States are feeling the impact of the shutdown more than Virginia. I wish to tell two stories, a personal one and then a story about one community in my State. In my State many Federal employees live in Virginia. About 150,000 Federal employees are jeopardized currently by the shutdown, and 70,000 of them are DOD civilians who were already furloughed earlier this year. One of the employees who is jeopardized is a major in the Air Force Reserve by the name of Eric Ryan. He lives in northern Virginia, is married, and has four children. Eric had a distinguished career in the Air Force, retired, became a civilian, rejoined the Air Force Reserve, and is currently working at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon as a civilian, he is currently furloughed with a wife and four children to support. Eric is a Presidential Management Fellow and has been loaned to my office for a period of time. He showed up at the Pentagon Tuesday to get furloughed, and then he came to my office to hear me deliver my furlough speech to all of my employees. He got the double dose that day. This afternoon I have the honor of going and participating in the promotion ceremony for Eric Ryan from major to lieutenant colonel. I am going to talk about him and his qualifications, but it is going to be a bitter moment for all of us as I engage in that promotion for this wonderful person. He first served this Nation by flying dozens of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and now serves the Nation in a new way, but has now been furloughed twice this year, once because of the sequester and next because of the shutdown. We have tens of thousands of veterans such as Eric Ryan who are going through the furlough experience. The second is a community story. If you were to ask where in Virginia would you feel the impact of the sequester, I think most people might think the neighborhoods around the Pentagon or Hampton Roads, where there is naval power. But the effects are being felt everywhere. I wish to speak about one community, Chincoteague, the barrier island off the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the subject of the famous children's book, ``Misty of Chincoteague.'' It is beautiful community, a tiny small town. Chincoteague's economy is fundamentally about visits to the national seashore, Assateague and Chincoteague Islands. But those parks and national resources have been closed. I got a call Tuesday morning right away from friends in Chincoteague saying: Chincoteague is motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and people who sell suntan lotion and sunglasses. Because of the closure, the entire economy has had its guts pulled out during the Federal shutdown. Moreover, there is a historic lighthouse at the wildlife refuge that has been restored. It has taken 6 years to restore. This week was the opening and celebration of the lighthouse. They expected visitors to come from everywhere. That has been cancelled. Chincoteague has one other industry that is very important. They didn't only want to be about tourism, so over the last 15 to 20 years they have worked to build up the capacity of NASA at Wallops Island, which is 5 miles from Chincoteague Island. Kids who graduate from high school and are interested in science and math don't have to move away and never come home. They can get a science and math degree, come back, and work as rocket scientists. Eighty percent of the NASA employees at Wallops near Chincoteague have been furloughed as a result of this shutdown. The experience of Col. Eric Ryan, who works in my office, and the experience of this small community on the Eastern Shore of Virginia demonstrates how serious these effects are. The good news is we can solve this if Speaker Boehner would only allow a vote to reopen government. The Presiding Officer knows this because we sat through it together. It bears a little bit of repetition. The Senate passed a budget on March 23 that funds all of these issues at the level that the Senate thinks is right. The same week the House passed a budget funding government at levels they think is right. Under the Budget Control Act of 1974, the right strategy at that point was to put the two budgets in conference and let conferees figure it out. For folks who aren't familiar with it--and there may be some who are listening--a budget conference is a pretty simple thing. When I was Governor of Virginia, we had them all the time. The two Houses would pass different budgets. Each House takes their budget, goes into the negotiating room, sits down, and compares. One side wins on this issue, one side wins on the other, and on a third issue they might split it 50-50. The House budget and the Senate budget are very different. But that is what we do. We sit down, listen, dialogue, compromise, and we solve the problems of the country. Nineteen times since March 23 we have stood on the floor of this body and said we want to go to conference with the House on this budget. Nineteen times, the last of which was yesterday, a small handful of Senators--and that was the phrase that the Senator from Utah used once on the floor in blocking this: We are a small handful of Senators--and the House Republicans have blocked a budget compromise. For the last 6\1/2\ months we have not had the opportunity to sit down and dialogue. For folks who don't know how a budget conference works, if, in a conference a compromise is reached, it doesn't just become law like that. The compromise has to come back to both Houses. Both Houses debate the compromise, both Houses vote on the compromise, and everyone's interests are protected. They can look at the compromise and decide whether they like it or don't. For 6\1/2\ months we have been blocked in an effort to go to budget conference. Imagine our amazement. In this body on Monday night, after the House shut down government, 3 hours later they passed a bill and said: We have an idea. Let's have a conference. Finally, 6\1/2\ months after they shut down government. But let's have it be a really particular kind of conference, not a conference about the budget of the United States. Let's have a conference about whether the Government of the United States should be open or closed. I know I can speak for my colleagues who are here. Our view is we will negotiate, compromise, and listen to any policy issue. Budget negotiation is exactly how you do this or policy debates are how you do it. But what none of us in this body or in the House should ever negotiate is whether the United States exists or not, whether it is funded or not, whether it is open or closed. I believe it has to be open. That is essentially what our oath of office says we have to do when we say we will faithfully discharge all the duties of the office to which we have been elected. We also won't negotiate whether the United States should pay its bills because the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in Section 5 makes very plain that the public debt of the United States and its validity shall not be questioned. There is a way forward here, and it is such a simple way forward: that is, Speaker Boehner needs to allow a vote in the House. It is simple. Allow a vote and not only allow a vote, but allow a vote on a budget number that he has already agreed to. The continuing resolution the Senator from Connecticut talked about that is currently pending, funds government for an interim period of time at a budget level that was the House's number. It is not a number I liked. We had a different number in the Senate, a higher number we want to fund it to. But we accepted the House's number for the short- term spending bill out of a spirit of compromise. We sent it back to the House and we said: We are compromising. We are not even going 50-50. We are compromising by accepting your budget number. This is not as if the Senator from Utah said we want to fund everything or nothing, no. We have other things we would like to fund that we are not funding in this bill because we accepted everything the House wants to fund in their CR. They only need to accept yes for an answer. The good news is this is not a partisan issue because many Senate Republicans want to do exactly what I am suggesting. Based on current reports in the House, there are numerous House Republicans--four of whom are from Virginia--who are publicly on the record. They wish to do exactly as we are suggesting. Speaker Boehner, bring your own spending bill up for a vote. If you do it will pass. If it passes, government will reopen. Once government has reopened, we can have a budget conference and talk about any issue the House wants to talk about, any issue that we want to talk about. But it is time to end hostage politics and reopen the doors. The Speaker has it in his hands to do that, simply and immediately. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise tonight--with the question of whether the House will allow government to continue or shut down--to actually talk for a few minutes about a simple concept but that is apparently difficult in this body, and that is compromise. I want to talk for a few minutes about compromise. Based on the action that was taken by the Senate earlier today, the House has an opportunity to accept a compromise that the Senate has put before them. The CR bill the House drafted contained a budget number that was their number, not our number. We weren't wild about it, but we accepted it. And the question is: Will the House accept yes for an answer? Over the weekend, I was traveling in Virginia--especially yesterday when the weather was great--to different events in central Virginia where there were big festivals, so people were gathering outside. As I traveled, I heard again and again: Don't shut down government and can't you find a compromise? People are aware in Virginia, and in Hawaii I know they feel the same, that there can be severe consequences to a shutdown. I know the Senator from Maryland may have already offered a number of these thoughts. A great agency such as NASA that funds science and research will see furloughs of 97 percent of its employees. The Commerce Department, which is about commerce, our business and our economy, will see furloughs of 87 percent of its employees. The National Institutes of Health, dealing with research and other important health matters, will see furloughs of 73 percent of their employees. Even an agency such as Treasury--the core Treasury function, separate from the IRS-- will see a reduction of their staff at 50 percent at a time when we need the Nation's fiscal system to be strong. The consequences of shutdown are severe, and that is why the citizens of Virginia are saying: Don't shut the government down. Find compromise. It is not just employees either, and that is significant enough. It will affect tens of thousands of employees in Virginia and services people rely on. To pick one as an example, the number of VA employees who will be furloughed is actually fairly small as a percentage, but the people at the VA who will be furloughed are the folks who work at the VA Benefits' Administration, which is the organization within the VA that processes veterans' benefits claims. If you are a veteran who has come home from Iraq or Afghanistan, and you have been part of a war that has now lasted for 12 or 13 years and you want to file for your benefits, which is something you are entitled to because you fought for the Nation--and we have heard the stories of the backlog in veterans' claims--you will be delayed even more because of the furlough. It is unfair to do this to our veterans. It is unfair to do this across government. I said I wanted to talk about compromise because I think this is not even fundamentally a battle about the budget. It is not a battle about the Affordable Care Act. It is a battle about whether compromise is good or bad. I don't know if anyone had a chance to read this, but there was a wonderful article in the Washington Post--an opinion article on Friday, September 27--that was authored by a columnist of the Post, Michael Gerson. Michael was the former speechwriter for President Bush 43, George W. Bush. He worked in the Bush administration and wrote an excellent piece that was published, and I want to read a bit of it. The title of the piece is ``A compromised reputation among the GOP.'' Again, it ran in The Washington Post last Friday. I will read a couple of quotes: The real target-- Not the ACA, not the budget-- is the idea of compromise itself, along with all who deal, settle or blink. In the middle of this unfolding Republican debate comes a timely National Affairs article by Jonathan Rauch. It is titled ``Rescuing Compromise,'' but it might as well have been called ``James Madison for Dummies.'' Rauch argues that Madison-- I have to mention a Virginian in my speech-- had two purposes in mind as he designed the Constitution. The first was to set faction against faction as a brake on change and ambition--a role that tea-party leaders have fully embraced. Madison's second purpose, however, was ``to build constant adjustment into the system itself, by requiring constant negotiation among shifting constellations of actors.'' Following the Articles of Confederation, America's founders wanted a more energetic government. But they made action contingent upon bargaining among branches of government and within them. ``Compromise, then, is not merely a necessary evil,'' argues Rauch, ``it is a positive good, a balance wheel that keeps government moving forward instead of toppling.'' Compromise, of course, can have good or bad outcomes. But an ideological opposition to the idea of compromise removes an essential cog in the machinery of constitutional order. ``At the end of the day,'' says Rauch, ``the Madisonian framework asks not that participants like compromising but that they do it--and, above all, that they recognize the legitimacy of a system that makes them do it.'' Finally from the Gerson article: It is a revealing irony that the harshest critics of compromise should call themselves constitutional conservatives. The Constitution itself resulted from an extraordinary series of compromises. And it created the system of government that presupposes the same spirit. ``Compromise,'' says Rauch, ``is the most essential principle of our constitutional system. Those who hammer out painful deals perform the hardest and, often, highest work of politics; they deserve, in general, respect for their willingness to constructively advance their ideals, not condemnation for treachery.'' That is what this debate is about: Is compromise good or is it bad? We have to be willing to compromise. I want to talk about what the Senate has been doing to advance the spirit of compromise. On the 23rd of March in this body--after a very late night--at 5 a.m. in the morning, the Senate passed the first Senate budget that we passed in 4 years. In that same week, the House passed a budget as well. We have talked about this often. Once that happens and the two budgets are passed, there is a budget conference to sit down and try to find compromise between these two different documents. These budgets passed more than 6 months ago, but there has been no budget conference. There has been no effort to find compromise. Why not? Because the Republicans--a tiny handful in the Senate and the majority in the House--do not want to compromise. Senate Democrats have made a motion 18 times since March 23 to begin a budget conference, and in every one of those instances, a handful of Republican--and when I use the word handful, I am quoting the Senator from Utah who objected to a budget compromise and said ``a handful of us object''--Members of this body, working together with House colleagues, have decided they do not want to put in motion the process for dialog and compromise. The Senate Democrats were, are, and will be ready to sit down at a budget conference table to negotiate, listen, and compromise to find a budget going forward. We have tried 18 times. We will try it a 19th time. We will try it a 20th time. We will keep working to compromise. We also compromised in the very matter of the bill that is pending before the body today. As the Presiding Officer knows, the continuing resolution bill was sent from the House over to the Senate last week. That is the way these bills start; they originate in the House. The bill had two components. The first component was ``defund ObamaCare,'' and the second was ``and then we will fund government.'' The House bill said they would fund the government at their proposed budgetary number, which is $986 billion in discretionary spending. That was their number; that was not our number. We had extensive discussions among Senators about what we thought of their proposal. Frankly, we thought the $986 billion number was too low. It includes all of the sequester cuts we disagree with. We think the right number to the budget compromise should be $1.05 trillion, not $986 billion. The Senate has a different idea about the number, but guess what. The Senate was willing to accept the House's number. We accepted the House's budget number out of the spirit of compromise, and we stripped away the ``defund the Affordable Care Act'' provision and said: Let's put that into a budget negotiation. In a budget negotiation, we can talk about that or anything else they want, but we won't tie it up with the threat of a government shutdown. So we sent the budget bill back to the House at their budget number and said to them: Can't you take yes for an answer? They have proposed funding at $986 billion. We do not agree with that number, but for purposes of the short-term CR, we will agree, out of the spirit of compromise: Can you take yes for an answer? The Presiding Officer knows the answer. They would not take yes for an answer. They brought it back and added new provisions: the repeal of a tax that would increase the deficit, and a delay in the Affordable Care Act provisions that would provide maternity service to expecting mothers, that would protect adults from not getting insurance on the grounds of preexisting conditions, that would give a significant tax credit to small businesses to help them pay for insurance. They wanted to delay all of those provisions. We have taken action again today. We have again made this bill what we call a clean spending bill. We have taken out anything other than what this bill was supposed to be: At what level should government be funded? We have gone back to the House and we said: We are accepting your proposal. We are accepting your number even though we have a different number we want to argue for, and we will save the other arguments for a budget conference if you will finally go to the table with us. I want to conclude and say that James Madison was right, and not because he was a Virginian. He was just right to recognize that compromise is the essential element of our system. Think about it for a minute. If you set up a government, you have three different branches. The legislative branch has two Houses. You have to find compromise between the two Houses to move forward. The Supreme Court in the judiciary has nine Justices. They have to work together and find a compromise, or a consensus, by a majority on any case. Even the President's power, which is unilateral so it seems as though it is not a compromise branch because we put the executive powers in the President's hands. How do we choose the President? We choose the President through the fundamental constitutional compromise of the electoral college. So the choice of a President is based on compromise. The entire constitutional system we have requires compromise. The Senate was willing to compromise and go to a budget resolution, and we have been blocked by the House. The Senate was willing to compromise and accept the House's budget number and they have not been willing to say yes even to their own budget number. We stand here tonight at 5:27 p.m. ready to compromise, and we will be ready the next hour to compromise. We will be ready to compromise and find a deal to keep this government open every minute, every second, from now until we get this right. But we do feel very strongly that no one should threaten to shut down the government of the United States. If a foreign enemy threatened to shut us down, we would unify, as we have so many times, to repel that threat. But we are allowing elected Members of Congress to threaten to shut down this body, the government of the greatest Nation on Earth? It is unfathomable to me. The only way I understand it is in exactly the terms Michael Gerson indicated in the Washington Post. This is not fundamentally about the Affordable Care Act or a debate about the budget. It is a fundamentally an attack by some upon the very notion of compromise that is at the core of our system of constitutional government. I stand on behalf of Virginians--and I don't think Virginians are different from the rest of America--by saying we have to be willing to compromise to find the common good. It is my hope that the House, when they act tonight, will act in the spirit of compromise and the common good and allow this government to remain open. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Would it be fair to say that part of the Senator's mission here is he told his voters what he would do. They knew what the Senator would do and chose him to do the job. One of the things the Senator is doing today on the floor with this effort is to basically live up to the promise that he made to them, and the mandate that they gave to him?

Mr. KAINE. Let me offer a hypothetical situation. Contemplate another State and another race between two candidates, where one candidate took the strong position that ObamaCare should be repealed and the other candidate took the strong position that ObamaCare should not be repealed. In that State, the candidate that won by a sizable margin was the candidate who said ObamaCare should not be repealed, having been plain about it with the voters, and the voters having heard the choices and made a choice. Does the Senator think it is also the case that a Senator in that hypothetical State should come to the body and do what he said he was going to do for his voters?

Mr. KAINE. The last thing I would ask the Senator is--the three Senators who are now in the Chamber are each from different States. We all ran in 2012. I do not know about the presiding officer's situation. I was in that hypothetical, as you understand, running against a candidate who promised to repeal ObamaCare. I promised to work on reform efforts but to reject any effort to repeal or defund ObamaCare. The voters of Virginia chose the candidate who was not for repeal of ObamaCare. I do not know if it was the same situation in Connecticut or not. I suspect it probably was. We each represent one State. There was also a national election in 2012, between a candidate, a President, who said that the Affordable Care Act was the law of the land and I am willing to work on it and improve it, but I will fight against efforts to repeal it or defund it, and a candidate who pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act. An election result in a Presidential election is listening to America, I believe. I am a believer in this system. I am a believer in democracy and the power of Presidential elections and mandates. I think the result in that election between the candidate who promised to maintain the Affordable Care Act and work to improve it and the candidate who promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act was not particularly close. I think it was a 53 to 47 percent election among the large size of a national electorate, rejecting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act position. Is that something that this body should at least consider or take into account as we wrestle with this question?

Mr. KAINE. I have a comment and a final question. I am not skilled at how campaigns are run, but I would challenge the Senator's assertion. I think virtually everyone in the country who voted in the Presidential election in 2012 knew that one candidate, the President, would fight to maintain the Affordable Care Act, and another pledged to repeal it. How much they did it in ads and on TV I cannot count. I actually saw a lot of ads about the very subject in the battleground State of Virginia. But I think the voters knew exactly the position of the two candidates on this issue. While it was not the only issue in the campaign, it was an important one. They had that before them as they made the decision. The last question I will ask is a little bit of a rhetorical one but it is a sincere one. I very much hope that regardless of the outcome of this debate over the next few days--and I strongly want the outcome of this debate to be that government continues and that we continue to provide the services that we need to provide, and that we save the debate about health care reform for another day. But I very much hope that the Senator introduces legislation about health care reform ideas and that the legislation not be wrapped up with the question of whether government should shut down or not but that it be stand-alone legislation, that it not be wrapped up with a question of whether we should default on our debts or not, but that it should be stand-alone legislation. I have a feeling that there are many Democrats and Republicans that would love to work on reform ideas. In this body and in the House we have a somewhat limited bandwidth. We are trying to deal with a lot of different issues. Health care is a hugely important one. Its connection to the economy is equally important, and I think there are a lot of Members here who would love to have a debate about reform. But for the last 3-plus years the only debate has been about the repealing or defunding instead of about reform. That makes it a fairly simple vote for many of us. It makes it a simple vote for many of us who feel as though the will of this body has been expressed, that the Supreme Court has rendered an opinion about the Affordable Care Act, that the American public rendered an opinion about two positions in a Presidential election in 2012. A defunding repeal strategy, which has been now done four dozen times by the House, is actually a pretty simple thing to move aside based on the foregoing, but if we set aside those efforts and try to take up the kinds of concrete reform ideas the Senator talked about earlier, I actually think there might be a number of things that we could all do together to improve the situation, but we don't need to do it while we are talking about the shutdown of the government or defaulting on America's bills for the first time in our history. Thank you. I yield the floor, and I yield back.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. I say to the Senator, if we get to that point and he introduces affirmative legislation to reform the health care system-- after we get through this debate--that would be legislation that would not be connected to the question, the existential question, of whether the government would continue to operate on October 1. So it would not be integrally wrapped up with sort of a threat to the economy that would be posed by a potential government shutdown, and it could be analyzed just on its own merits: Is this a good reform or a bad reform, without being wrapped around the question of whether we would shut down the government and do we lay off or put on some kind of furlough the nurses at Fort Belvoir Hospital who are taking care of wounded warriors every day. That would be a reform bill where we could dig into the reform and talk about the reform and analyze what is good and what is bad and what should be fixed and maybe what should not be, without it being wrapped around the question of a government shutdown. Would the Senator not agree with that?

Mr. KAINE. If I could, let me ask: A reform in the Senator's view that might encompass a different solution for the preexisting condition or an ending of the ban on interstate purchasing of insurance, if we get through this week and we are into next week and ObamaCare has not been defunded and we have funded government operations going forward, the Senator could introduce a reform bill proposing to do just those things, could he not?

Mr. KAINE. So then, to make sure I understand, the Senator is opposed to the provision in the current Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to write insurance to individuals within those limitations, regardless of preexisting conditions.

Mr. KAINE. Does the Affordable Care Act require that insurance be provided to folks despite preexisting conditions at the same rate across the board?

Mr. KAINE. I say to the Senator, you engaged in a colloquy with the Senator from Illinois about a provision that I wanted to follow up on. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it was completely lawful and, in fact, common for insurance companies to turn down individuals for insurance because of preexisting health conditions. I do not think--but I want to make sure about this--I do not think the Senator was arguing that we should go back to that day and that we should go back to a status quo where children would be turned down for health insurance because of preexisting health care conditions.