Barbara Mikulski

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I wish to speak as if in morning business and consume as much time as is necessary.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Wow, I think we are growing weary. I think we are growing weary of the gridlock, deadlock, and hammer lock on our government. I think we are growing weary of the partisan posturing by one faction in one party in one House. The American people want us to reopen government so that the government can meet the national security needs of the United States, protect the safety of the people of the United States, meet compelling human needs, and do what we can to create jobs today, such as physical infrastructure, and to lay the groundwork for jobs tomorrow by investing in research and development. The American people want a government that works as hard as they do, and so do I. Instead of working hard to serve our veterans or our elderly or promoting a growing economy, we are dealing with the shutdown of the government. The House is sending us bills which on first blush seem attractive. I mean, who doesn't support our National Guard? Who doesn't want to fund NIH? I certainly do. NIH is located in my State. I am so proud of the men and women who work there. Funding also goes to great State universities doing research, such as the University of Wisconsin. They are out there doing it. We cannot cherry-pick. What they are doing now is a public relations ploy. The House wants to send us cherry-picked solutions to the shutdown problem. It is contrived, and it is cynical. What I am asking the House of Representatives to do is take up the Senate bill we sent them that is a clean continued funding resolution. What does clean mean? It means it is stripped of politically motivated ideological riders. The second thing is it would fund the government for 6 weeks. In that 6 weeks, it would give us the chance to work out what our funding should be for the rest of the year. I would hope we could find a way to cancel the sequester, which is to reduce public debt without reducing jobs or opportunity, and get us through the debt ceiling. Please--that bill is pending in the House now, and I ask that they do that instead of sending us these piecemeal solutions. I remind my colleagues that the continuing funding resolution passed the Senate last Friday. It reopens the government, and it gives us the opportunity to renegotiate. I am willing to negotiate, but we can't capitulate to these partisan demands to defund ObamaCare and do other kinds of riders that work against us. To move forward, we need to pass the Senate continuing resolution. I understand that later today the President is meeting with Speaker Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and Senator McConnell. I hope that wiser heads will now prevail so we can get a path forward to reopen all of government, not just cherry-picked items--many of which are absolutely desirable--and open the entire Federal Government. I know that the House wants to send something over to reopen NIH. Of course. That's what I just said. But what about the Centers for Disease Control? So we open NIH, but we don't open the Centers for Disease Control. It is an agency that is located in Atlanta, but it is part of our public health triad, which is the work at NIH, the work of the Food and Drug Administration, which stands sentry over the safety of our food supply and the safety and efficacy of our drugs and medical devices, and then there is the Centers for Disease Control, which is down in Atlanta. Right this very minute in Atlanta, GA, at the Centers for Disease Control, close to 9,000 people have been furloughed. Furlough is just a nice word that means layoff. It also means that it not only affects the labs in Atlanta, but it also affects labs in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The work of the CDC is also nationwide because they are our biosurveillance system on infectious diseases. That means that State health departments--all 50 States and the territories--depend on the Centers for Disease Control to track and give them information on what the trends are related to infectious diseases. They are the ones who alert clinicians and pediatricians if there is a new kind of ear infection that could infect children. But because of the government shutdown, there is no one there who can do this. Earlier this year--to give an example--Hepatitis A sickened 162 people in 10 States. The CDC linked the outbreak to pomegranate seeds coming in from a foreign country in a frozen berry mix. We were able to go right to the private sector. They complied with us right away, and we were able to get that off the market and contain this so it wouldn't spread to other people. They worked with the private sector in order to protect the American people. Don't we want to reopen CDC? I could go over disease after disease and infection after infection which will not monitored. Let's take the common one, flu. We have all had the sniffles, but the sniffles can also kill people. On average more 200,000 Americans will be hospitalized because of flu and 3,000 Americans die from flu. Vaccines can prevent the flu. The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, were out there making sure there was enough vaccine available, that it was being distributed fairly and equitably in the United States, but also watching the infection trends because if a trend was heading to one State or one locale, the public health people could work together in order to accelerate or expand our flu vaccine. This is what they do. Did you also know that there are disease detectives? Many people don't know that there are disease detectives. So what does Senator Barb mean when she says this? Sometimes there is an outbreak and people get sick. People even die. They wonder what it is. They dial 911, and there is a group of people who are like a disease identification SWAT team. They work with the best and brightest at that State level, use the best technology in science from our country, and even around the world, to identify what that is. That is how we found out about Legionnaires' disease, and the Hantavirus disease which affected Indian reservations. That is how we jumped in on the pomegranate seed situation. They get right in there. But you know what. Those people were furloughed. What is this? Do I want to reopen NIH? I absolutely do, but I am going to talk about the Centers for Disease Control. I could also talk about other Federal employees and what shutting down means. It obviously isn't just public health. I believe in Social Security. I really do. It has meant so much to so many people. It is one of the great earned benefits in our country. I want to make sure there is no false alarm here: Social Security checks will go out. However, as of this week, the people who work at Social Security, those who oversee eligibility benefits for the elderly and disability benefits for those who are unable to work, have been furloughed. Over the entire United States of America, Social Security has furloughed--there are 18,000 people who work in Social Security offices in local communities that were furloughed. Social Security is everywhere. They provide access for the American people to apply for their Social Security, to apply for disability benefits, and also to apply for their Medicare--18,000 people. Social Security is headquartered in Maryland. This isn't because it is in Maryland. I know these workers. I know the exams they take to qualify to work for Social Security--whether it is a claims representative or an actuary predicting the trends. Those 18,000 people were proud to work for Social Security and make sure that one of the greatest social insurance programs ever was administered efficiently, effectively, and that the people who were eligible got what they earned. Did you know that the overhead for running Social Security is less than 2 percent? It is lower than any private insurance company in America. Gosh. So they do it well and they do it smartly. They have been stretched because of sequester, but they are there. Right now, because of what we have been doing, we are only going to further delay these other benefits. So I want to open the doors of Social Security. When people apply, they want to be sure help is there. When people dial, they want people to be there. That is all, by the way, coming back to NIH and what they want to send over from the House. It is in the Labor-HHS appropriations. That is under my very able subcommittee chairman, Senator Tom Harkin. Senator Harkin has worked very hard on his bill to make sure we meet the needs but we do it in a way that is cost-efficient. Did my colleagues know that because of parliamentary obstructionism, Senator Harkin has not been able to bring his bill to the floor since 2007-- 2007, year after year, hearing after hearing. When he wanted to bring up the funding for the Department of HHS, which these agencies are in-- Education, as well as the Department of Labor, which has things such as mining safety in it--he could not even bring it to the floor because they would not let him or it would be filibustered. While everybody over there is strutting around saying we are going to fund NIH, after we shamed them into it yesterday, what they don't tell us is they can't move the Labor-HHS bill in the House. Do we know why? Because they fund it at $122 billion. Do we know what level that is? That is the 2003 level. It is not even the 2012 level or the 2010 level. They want to fund it back to George Bush and right around the funding level of 2003. They want to take us back a decade. They want to take us back to the Dark Ages. Well, not in the Senate. Senator Harkin wanted to come to the floor with funding at $164 billion, a slight increase from last year. There is a 42-percent difference between the House and the Senate Labor-HHS bill: $164 billion to $122 billion. I want Senator Harkin to be able to bring his bill to the floor and debate it. Do we want an NIH? Let's fund it. Do we want a Centers for Disease Control, which is in the State of Georgia, with two excellent Senators from Georgia. Then fund it. Let's debate. Let's discuss. Let's amend. Senator Harkin cannot even get it to the floor. Over in the House, they can't move it either because the funding for Health and Human Services, Education, and the Department of Labor is at the 2003 level. So while they want to send us an individual bill for an individual agency--for HHS and so on--as desirable as it is, I want to reopen government. That is what the Senate bill is. I want to reopen negotiations. I would like to return to a regular order, where using the parliamentary tools, tactics, and even tricks cannot delay bringing a bill to the floor. Since 2007, Senator Harkin has not been able to bring a bill to the floor for an open debate, unfettered by filibuster, to be able to discuss this. So this is what this is all about. This isn't about numbers. This is about meeting compelling human needs. In the Labor-HHS subcommittee, we fund NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, the Social Security Administration, mining safety, Department of Education. This is what we should be working on. We should be working on education, money for the disabled, et cetera. So I come to the floor again as the chair of the Appropriations Committee. I am proud of the work my subcommittee chairmen have done in getting bills ready to come to the floor for debate by following regular order. I so appreciate the cooperation we have received from the other side of the aisle in our committee. There has been a great sense of cooperation. We have had disputes and disagreements on funding levels and even matters of policy, but I had an open amendment process. Everybody had their say. Everybody had their day. We moved the bills forward. That is called regular order. That is called democracy. Everybody has their day and everybody has their say. But let's move the bill. So let's reopen government. Let's have a true negotiation. I hope that out of the 5:30 meeting will come a path forward. But we have one now: Pass the Senate resolution in the House, come back, and let's let the work of the Senate and the U.S. Government get going again. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

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

Ms. MIKULSKI

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

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I rise to continue the discussion on the situation in which we find ourselves, which is that the entire Government of the United States of America has been shut down, and those Federal employees who are working are working without pay. This is a terrible situation. I implore the House to pass a clean short-term continuing funding resolution that the Senate sent over to them 4 days ago so we can reopen the government. Let's reopen the government. Let's reopen the Government of the United States of America. The way we reopen the government is to pass the Senate continuing funding resolution. What would it do? It would fund the government at fiscal 2013 levels. That doesn't mean it adds new money; so there is no new money. It is keeping us at current spending levels. We would have a short-term continuing resolution until November 15 while we work out other issues, and then we can get over the speed bump of raising the debt ceiling. I believe that is the path forward. Where we are now has terrible consequences. It has terrible consequences for our economy. It has terrible consequences for our standing in the world. It has terrible consequences for the functioning of our government. We are speaking now about a shutdown of the government. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women who work for the Federal Government who signed up to do a job in the service of their Nation. They have literally, with the passing hours, had to either take a furlough--and a furlough means we have essentially laid them off; we have laid them off--or they are working because their work is essential, such as an FBI agent, but they are not getting paid. We are paying them with IOUs. This is not the United States of America. I am thinking about those people who are working every single day. Let me paint a picture for my colleagues. In my own State, we are the headquarters to the National Weather Agency. People who watch TV think they get their weather news from either the Weather Channel or they get it from their local TV or radio station through doppler radar. It is terrific. But guess where they get their information. They get it from their Federal Government. They get it from the weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who work hard every day predicting the weather and getting out the information that news people can use in their own community. So if a person is a farmer, he is getting that information. If a person is a waterman who works on the Chesapeake Bay and he has to make sure the storm is not coming while he is out there crabbing or oystering to keep his business going, he needs to know the weather. Whether a person is a county executive or a mayor, people need to know what their weather is going to be. So they have been on the job, whether they have been predicting hurricanes or tornadoes or giving us the basic day-to-day information. The weather forecasters are at their duty station, but what are we saying to them now? Guess what. Be there, but we are not going to pay you except through IOUs. Yesterday I spoke about the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration in my State. There is another major agency which is not in my State but very important to the functioning of our country: the Centers for Disease Control. Right now, they are working down there in Georgia. What is the Centers for Disease Control? What is their job? Their job is exactly that: disease control. When veterans and other people were ill and getting sick in a hospital in Philadelphia, they were called in because they are our top biosleuths in America. They are our own bioforensic scientists, our own bio-CSI team. They were the ones who found out about something called Legionnaires' Disease, and they helped those people who got sick in that hotel, and were able to put out that information. They are the ones who are standing sentry to make sure there is no emerging surprise or pandemic in the world. They are the ones who are gathering information now to know the latest threats to the health and safety of the United States of America. What is it they are doing? If a person is a pediatrician, they are watching the CDC to see what are the latest causes of ear infections that could be infecting children and the right treatment to help them, the right treatment for their doctors to be able to know. That is what they do. When their labs are being closed, it leaves States on their own--State health departments--to be able to look out for antibiotic- resistant viruses and other infectious diseases, and a variety of other kinds of things. We need the Centers for Disease Control. They employ thousands of people in Atlanta, GA. Yet we are telling them: Well, maybe not the way we need you. Yesterday, the President passed a bill to guarantee military personnel be paid on time. We support that. But what is missing from the bill is important. The intelligence community, made up mostly of civilians, will not be covered. It means that over 72 percent who work in our intelligence agencies will either face furloughs or will be working with IOUs. Who else involved in our national security is not covered? We didn't cover border security. We didn't cover FBI. We didn't cover DEA. We didn't cover the U.S. Marshals. What are the marshals doing? It is not like Wyatt Earp. Marshals aren't just out there like cowboys in a Wild West movie when we watch a miniseries. The Marshals Service is very important. Do my colleagues know what they are doing in Maryland right now? First of all, they provide security in the courthouse. They do the security to protect the judges. We have some of the most violent gangs and criminals coming in and the marshals need to protect those who are enforcing the law through the judicial system. They are also going after the sexual predators. They are the ones who track all of the evidence and go after sexual predators to make sure they are not loose in the neighborhoods, and they are working with local law enforcement. They also go after missing fugitives. We know about the big signs that say ``Ten Most Wanted.'' Well, guess who goes after them. The Marshals Service. That is one of their primary responsibilities. That is what Federal law enforcement is. These employees are also critical to national security. Trying to do this piecemeal--oh, we have looked out for our troops. We should look out for our troops. But while we look out for our troops, we should look out for those who come back home. I know the Presiding Officer and others have been strong supporters of our veterans. I am a strong supporter of our veterans. Many of the services being performed by the VA are open, such as VA health care, but there are other services where we have to delay the backlog on veterans' cases, veterans' disability benefits. Through appropriations, we have actually put money in the Federal checkbook to deal with more training, more overtime to reduce this backlog. When we speak about shutdowns, I want to take a moment to talk about my own office in relationship to veterans. I am the longest serving woman in Senate history. It is a great honor. In my 25 years as a Senator and after 25 years as the senior woman here, I have only closed down my office twice: once in 1995 and this morning. I cannot express to my colleagues the heavy heart I had when I talked to my staff. My staff is a great staff. Whether they are working in Maryland or whether they are working here in Washington, we are a local phone call away to 6 million Marylanders. Of those people who work for me, one is a young lady. I hope I don't embarrass her if she is watching TV. Her name is Denise. Denise has worked for me for 30 years, back when I was in the House of Representatives and now as a Senator. She is a caseworker, a constituent service worker. For 30 years she has specialized in helping me respond to the needs of veterans. Veterans all over Maryland love her. They depend on her, and I depend on her so that I can help those veterans. I know my time has expired, but Denise's time on the job shouldn't expire. I want to make sure Denise is on her job. I want to reopen my office. I want to make sure we reopen government. We can do that if we pass the Senate continuing resolution. Hello to the House. Don't send us piecemeal. Let the House vote on the Senate bill. No gag rule in the House. Free the House, open the House, open government, and let's get the job done. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, we are at the brink. We are only hours away from a possible government shutdown. All over my State and all over the Nation there are very devoted Federal employees who are waiting to hear: Are we going to be called nonessential to performing important government services? Should they come in tomorrow? People have applied for small business loans. Are those loans going to be processed? People have applied for student loans. Are they going to be processed? What is going to happen to the National Weather Service? What is going to happen at NIH? What is going to happen at the Food and Drug Administration, where people stand sentry over the safety of our food supply and our drug supply. We don't know because we have just tabled the radical bill that the House sent over to us. It was deliberately designed to be politically provocative. Continuing resolutions were always about disputes over money. They were not about political, ideological viewpoints over past legislation. I am pleased that what we did was to table it and send it back to the House. The Senate acted very responsibly last week on a short-term continuing funding resolution that got rid of politically motivated riders and kept the government working for the American people until November 15 to work out our differences on funding bills. The House sent this back--yet one more bill that says if you don't delay the Affordable Care Act for 1 year, we will shut down the government. If you don't eliminate the benefits affecting prevention and particularly women's health, we will shut down the government. If the government shuts down tomorrow, it will be because of the House's viewpoint: My way or the highway. A government shutdown is a serious matter. These are a few things that will happen if we don't come together across the aisle, across the dome, and across town to pass a clean short-term continuing resolution. I wish to take a minute to highlight how damaging a government shutdown is on the day-to-day lives of our American people and our economy. Shutting down the Federal Government will have immediate and harmful consequences on our economy. Small Business Administration approval loans will be put on hold, and 28 million small businesses will no longer have access to federally assisted loans or technical assistance. In the rural areas, the USDA Rural Development housing, farm loan and grant program will stop. Let's go to the safety of our waterways. The Army Corps of Engineers will stop work on all flood control and navigation projects. This is what helps ensure that our ships can travel through America's waterways, whether they are coming up the Chesapeake Bay into the Port of Baltimore or they are traveling down the Mississippi River or the Missouri River or coming into the gulf. The Department of Commerce will stop economic development, minority business, and international trade assistance programs. I know that the House passed a separate amendment funding active duty military. I would hope so. These are men and women who put themselves in the line of duty. I also wish to remind people that there are other people every day who are doing a job to protect the health, safety, and laws of the American people. I represent all of the men and women who work at the Food and Drug Administration. It is headquartered in my State, and 2,000 people--or 55 percent--will be furloughed at midnight. FDA will stop monitoring imports at our borders. What does that mean? Those men and women whose job it is to stand sentry over the food supply of the United States of America, we are going to tell them they are nonessential. If they stand sentry over the safety of our drugs and our medical devices, we are telling them they are nonessential. I don't think the American people support that. They might be a little bit cranky about the Federal Government here or there, but I think they want their food to be safe, their drugs to be safe, and they want us to move ahead with these devices to make sure they are in clinical practice. Over at the National Institutes of Health, which is located in Bethesda, MD--the National Institutes of Health and their subsidiaries that receive extramural funding throughout the United States of America--70 percent of the staff at NIH will be furloughed. Seventy percent of the 10,000 men and women who work at NIH will be furloughed at midnight. These are the people who are working on the cure for Alzheimer's, they are working on the cure for autism, and they are working on the cure for arthritis, and I am just going through the ``a'' words. We could go on to the ``b'' words. How about breast cancer? How about cancer itself? Last year, when the NIH announced that cancer rates in America had been reduced by 15 percent, instead of pinning medals on the people at NIH and the private sector who worked with us on important drugs and biological products, we announced sequester. What kind of government would destroy the very agency that is set up to come up with cures in the case of Alzheimer's cognitive stretch-out? Seventy percent. And who are they? They are the lab technician people. They are the people who help run the administrative end of things, which enables those talented researchers to be able to do this. The NIH Clinical Center won't be able to admit new patients or start new clinical trials. The NIH Clinical Center is a hospital at NIH. You don't go there unless you are really sick and unless you are really desperate and unless you really have no place to go. You go in with no hope. But that is what they have nicknamed NIH around America--not the National Institutes of Health but the National Institutes of Hope, that what they are doing today is going to lead to solving the problems of tomorrow. Why? Why are we furloughing 70 percent? And not only are we furloughing, we are saying: Bye-bye for now. You are nonessential. Well, I think they are crucial. I think they are not only essential, but I think they are crucial. So I worry about what are our priorities. Then we go to the weather forecasters. Oh, they will be on the job. They are located in my State too. You might say: Well, do you have any people who work in the private sector? People in Maryland work in the private sector because of the public sector. Our law enforcement, our FBI, will be on the job. They are in the line of fire too, but they will be getting an IOU. Instead of an IOU, we should say to the FBI and to our border patrol and to our marshals, who are chasing sexual predators and human traffickers, not an IOU, we owe you a debt of gratitude. We owe you getting your pay on time. We shouldn't hide the fact you haven't received a cost of living for 3 years. And we shouldn't be dancing around with ideologically motivated shutdowns. Social Security checks will go out, but the 18,000 people who will visit Social Security offices will find they are understaffed. On the average, half a million people call Social Security every day. They are going to get either no answer or a busy signal. I could go on and on about what the consequences of a shutdown will be. We really cannot do that. So I say to my colleagues on the other side of the dome, please, let's pass a clean CR. Let's pass it to November 15. Let's negotiate on a middle-ground number. They have a budget number of $988 billion, and they accept sequester as the new norm. Let's find a way to cancel sequester at least for 2 years. I marked up the appropriations bills at $1.058 trillion. That is the number the Senate passed in its Budget Committee in April. There is a $70 billion difference. I am ready to negotiate, but we can't capitulate. Let's find a middle ground. There was a great American general and a great statesman and a real American icon--Colin Powell. Over and over during the Reagan administration he would say: Let's find that sensible center. Let's find that sensible center. Let's avoid a shutdown. Let's stop playing slam-down politics. Let's come together and find a way to solve the problem of keeping the government open as well as a long-term fiscal solution for paying down our government's debt. I understand that. But also let's make sure we have a progrowth budget that lowers the unemployment rate, raises educational achievement, finds those cures for diseases affecting the American people. Let's have an FDA that can get them approved, ensuring safety and efficacy in the hands of our doctors here and doctors all over the world. Let's make sure that when we talk about American exceptionalism, we know where it comes from. Mr. President, I know there are other colleagues who wish to speak. I now yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I rise to once again speak about where we are, where we ought to be, and where I hope we will be. It is now 8:30 in the evening. We are 3\1/2\ hours, essentially, until the government begins to shut down. Can we believe this? We are the United States of America. We are a superpower. We are supposed to be a nation governed by rule of law, and we are about to shut down--not shut us down because of a catastrophic event that hit us. It is not as if a meteor has streaked across the sky and hit the United States of America, taking out our power grid and rendering us powerless. It is not as if we have been hit by a global pandemic that would bring us to our knees. We are in a self-induced act, about to shut down the functioning of the government of the United States of America. I find this shocking. I have been through this in the mid-1990s. It is deeply disturbing to the people who work for the Federal Government, who get up every day and go to their job trying to perform a service or a function they consider important to the United States, whether it is in transportation, protecting the environment, Federal law enforcement, important financial regulatory agencies, such as our consumer protection agency or our financial services or the Consumer Product Safety Commission in my own State, which protects us and particularly our children against harmful products. So there are those functions that are going to be shut down. You know what is going to be said to those people--to the men and women who work for the United States of America. Most of you are considered nonessential. That might be a witty throwaway line for a cable TV show, but I happen to think they are very essential and so does the rest of America. These people are performing very important functions to protect America. The House feels it protected America by passing a military pay bill. The Senate passed it by unanimous consent. But guess what. It still means almost 50 percent of the men and women who work at the Department of Defense will be furloughed tomorrow. They are going to be told they are nonessential. Who is essential to defense and who isn't? We certainly know our men and women who wear the uniform and who are in harm's way need to get their pay. They need to get their supplies. They need to get what they need to defend America, but they also need a fully functioning Department of Defense. I think there are other agencies that protect the United States, one of which is Federal law enforcement--whether it is the FBI, the Marshal Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and, yes, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They put themselves in the line of fire too, along with our Customs and our Border Patrol agents, some of whom have already died. What about our prison guards who are there facing people who are ready to either kill them or break out or break them up at the first chance they can get. We don't have to pursue this route. Remember, this is self-induced. It is, as our President said, being induced by one faction in one party in one House of our government over one issue--not funding, but should we fund the President's Affordable Care Act. That is the law of the land. It is already in existence, and a good part of it will go into effect on October 1. When I talk about this, I am speaking from the standpoint of being the chair of the committee called the Appropriations Committee. That is the committee that puts money into the Federal checkbook. That Federal checkbook keeps the entire discretionary funding for the U.S. Government operating--and it is $1 trillion. Wow. What a number. Gasp. You know what. It is a big number, but it is a big country with big responsibilities. That is not the total funding of the Federal Government because there is mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is our Social Security benefits, our veterans' benefits, earned benefits--earned benefits. All of that is over several other trillion dollars. There is a dispute about how much the spending should be. That is an honest dispute. That is what funding disputes and resolutions should be about. I should be in a room right this very minute with my House counterpart, Congressman Hal Rogers, the Republican chairman, a fine, honorable man from Kentucky, and my Democratic counterpart Congresswoman Nita Lowey from New York, along with my vice chairman, Senator Richard Shelby, another fine Southern gentleman, a fiscal conservative, and we should be discussing that. But that is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about what is the House's number, what is the Senate's number, what is the best number to fund our government and do it in a way that is smart, effective, and frugal. Oh no. The big fight is over ObamaCare. That is not what it should be about. We have had something called continuing resolutions before. A continuing resolution should have another word in it--``funding.'' It is the continued funding resolution, and it is to keep government funded while we resolve our disputes. These resolutions were always, No. 1, short term, and No. 2, they focused on fiscal differences--where did we disagree on fiscal matters. And there is disagreement. The House marked up their bills primarily to $988 billion. That acknowledged that sequester is the new normal. We in the Senate marked up our bill, and the number we used was $1.058 trillion. The number I used came from the Senate-passed budget bill under the chairmanship of Senator Patty Murray. So there is a $70 billion difference between the House and the Senate, and that is an honest dispute. I am ready to negotiate with Congressman Rogers, but I am not ready to capitulate. What does capitulate mean? It means we don't even get to a number because we are fighting about ObamaCare. We should be discussing what is the way to do this. I am willing to see a compromise because my goal is that in December we will pass all of the funding bills, that we would have canceled sequester for 2 years, and we would have formed a compromise on a number that does reduce public debt--we acknowledge that--but that also makes public investments that create jobs and growth in our country. We would do that through transportation, research and development, and things we can also make and sell overseas. These are the kinds of things we want to invest in--the physical infrastructure and human infrastructure, such as education, research and development. We want to have the kind of approach that is progrowth and a pro-American future. I want to get to that debate. I want to get to that discussion. I want to get to that conference. But I cannot get to it because we are fighting over ObamaCare. Somehow or another that term is supposed to be kind of a sarcastic thing, to call it ``ObamaCare.'' I think we need to respect the President of the United States. I like calling it the Affordable Care Act. But if people want to call it ObamaCare, let them do it. The President does care. He does care that 42 million people don't have health insurance and that we needed to reform our health care system to get more value for our dollar and get rid of the punitive practices of insurance companies denying people health care on the basis of a preexisting condition and, by the way, as a consumer advocate the Chair knows this, charging women much more for insurance than men are charged of comparable age and health status. So I come to the floor tonight and I ask my House colleagues--I served in the House--please, let's stop the ideological amendments and get on to what appropriations are supposed to be, what a continuing resolution is supposed to be--a short-term approach. That is why I am recommending November 15, to get us to the point where we have compromise on fiscal matters--how can we end the sequester for 2 years, how can we pass all of our funding bills, and how can we come to a sensible compromise on the $70 billion difference between us. We have tried everything we know. Senator Murray worked very hard to pass the budget bill. We passed it in a marathon session, and I was proud of us. We worked hard. We had great debate. It was heartfelt and hard fought. But in the end, we had over 70 votes. Then Senator Murray did what the law requires. She said she wanted to go to conference, along with her vice chairman and ranking member Senator Sessions. But six Republican Senators objected. So we have yet to be able to even have a conference to get to the overall budget, which is about what our tax policy should be, our approach to mandatory spending, and a target number for me to reach with my appropriations members on both sides of the aisle. We never got to that. So we marked up our bills in appropriations. We followed the guidelines given to us by the Senate bill at $1.058 trillion. We have been in frequent conversation--frequent conversation--with Congressman Rogers and Congresswoman Lowey. That is the way Senator Shelby and I work. We also have had frequent conversations. But we are talking to ourselves. So now I am talking to the American people. I think they want an orderly process. The Founders of our country said we would not be a government of personalities and plebiscites and wins and whims. We would be a government of institutions and laws and a process within our parliamentary form of government for resolving disputes. Let us get back to regular order. Let us pass a simple straightforward continuing resolution to keep the government open until November 15, with the direction that we end sequester, come up with a compromise on the funding, and, at the same time, be able to pass all of our bills. I think we can do it. I think there is the will. I think there is the wallet. We just need to find the way. The way for the House is to give us a plain straightforward bill. Let us pass it over here. Let us keep America open and let us keep America running. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, as you know, we are only 2 hours now from a shutdown. I am sure those who are mesmerized by our behavior saw a group of Senators on the floor who looked like they were smiling and enjoying themselves. Let me tell the Presiding Officer what was going on. Senators were actually having a conversation. We were talking about is there a possibility of a compromise. What you saw there is what I hope eventually would become a committee of 100, people actually thinking what could get us to a situation where we could begin to focus on the fiscal problems of the United States. There is a difference between the House appropriations bill and the Senate bill. I chair that committee. So there is a difference with us. But what I want people to see is that there are good people on both sides of the aisle who would like to get something done. The first thing we would like to get done tonight is not to have a government shutdown and to lay the groundwork for a continuing funding resolution that would be short term, that would enable us to come up with a compromise on discretionary spending, where we could reduce our public debt, fund our government at a smart, frugal level, and also do it in the way that promotes growth. This is what I think the mood of many in the Senate is. I think it is the mood on the majority of both sides of the aisle. So what do we need from our friends in the House? We do not need one more politically provocative, veto-bait rider on the funding resolution. The Senate passed a bill that essentially laid out a framework exactly for what I said, a continuing resolution to November 15, and a fiscal level that is their level now. We want to negotiate up. I certainly do. If they would just take up the Senate bill which is neat, clean, clear, and gets us moving forward, we could be able to do this. So we were not just ha-ha-ha'ing over there. There is nothing here tonight to ha-ha-ha about. But there is a mood on both sides of the aisle to stop the shutdown, stop the shutdown and stop the slamdown. Let's be able to pass something tonight that gets us to a way that we can keep the government open, keep our processors functioning for compromise and negotiation and be able to get the job done. I think it would be an outstanding achievement. I believe the mood is here. I said it earlier. I think there is the will. I even think there is the wallet. Please, if the House cooperates, we would even have a way forward. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I chair the Senate Appropriations Committee. It is a great honor. I am the one that would go to conference. Hey, I'm ready. However, a motion to tell us to meet in conference without a continuing funding resolution to keep the government open is a hollow gesture and a cynical gesture and a manipulative gesture. To say ``have a conference,'' that means, myself, my Republican vice chairman, other conferees that would be appointed, we would sit down with the House conferees. By the way, we talk all the time. We started something new under my leadership, with the concurrence of Senator Shelby, talking with the House. Do we want to meet in a conference? You bet. But to meet in a conference without the continuing funding resolution included in it means that the government shuts down at midnight without a continuing funding resolution to a date certain. You can tell us to meet all you want, but the government will shut down. My whole point is to agree with my colleagues here that the House should take up what the Senate sent them. The Senate sent, in a gesture of comity and so on, a simple continuing resolution. Keep the government funded until November 15. This would give us opportunities to have that conference. We accepted their funding level, planning to negotiate a higher level. We had been waiting and waiting for Senator Murray to be able to go to conference on the budget so that we could arrive at this. People might say: Senator Mikulski, I'm confused. Murray is the budget. You are appropriations. Are they not the same thing? No. Senator Murray is the Budget Committee. That is the full revenue. That is the full Federal budget. It includes discretionary spending. I am one part of that. It includes mandatory spending. That is Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, other mandatory spending. It also includes revenue which means that your books ultimately balance and you have a balance in your economy. The Budget Committee's job is to arrive at that, working with the House. They then give us, the appropriators, something called a 302(a). It is a section in the Budget Act. That Budget Committee tells us, the appropriators, the cap that we can spend. The appropriators are neither free spenders nor freeloaders. We get a cap, a 302(a). I have 12 subcommittees. Those 12 subcommittees, we divide them up in terms of what we think are the important investments that the country should make; that is into the 12 committees. Then they work with their Republican members to arrive at the subcommittees, and we bring them to the floor. I have not had a top line. I have not had my cap, because she cannot go to conference. Remember those conferences everybody likes to have? So, had Senator Murray gone to a conference we would have had that number. But in the absence of that, I did something really bold. I took the Senate for its word. This spring when the Budget Committee passed their 302(a) allocation, it would have been $1.058 trillion. That is how we Senate appropriators, we Democrats, marked up our 12 bills. Some might say that is a lot of money. It sure is a lot of money, and we did a good job with it. We had smart public investments and every one of my subcommittees had the inspector general at their hearings so we could identify duplicative, dated or dysfunctional programs. We are ready to cut. We know how to cut. We are ready to go, and every one of my subcommittees is ready to go. Am I ready to go to conference? You bet. But to go to conference without that continuing funding resolution is, again, a hollow action that once again wastes time and wastes opportunity. It is not just those in our country who watch C-SPAN. The world watches C-SPAN. The world is watching us. This is the United States of America. They are watching our parliamentary system, which was once the greatest in the world. We have gone from being the greatest deliberative body to the greatest delaying body, and we delay through hollow gestures back and forth. I want to do everything I can--working on a bipartisan basis--to maintain the greatness of America, but in order to do that, the greatness of America needs to work tonight. We need to come to our senses, come to an agreement, come to closure, and keep the government open. I am happy to go to the conference, but I would like a date certain. My preference is November 16. Keep the government open. Keep us in not only our job but keep America working. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Ms. MIKULSKI. And I feel the same way. I understand the Senator from Alabama is the ranking member of the Budget Committee. Could the Senator tell me why six Senators have objected on his side of the aisle to having the conference on the budget? The Senate passed a budget bill 5 months ago, and we could have been in negotiations to resolve that. Could the Senator tell me why those six Senators object? And because of that objection, we do not have a budget. Senator Murray passed a budget working here in a marathon. The Senator will remember that.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator for his answer. I dispute the logic and the reasoning, but I thank the Senator, and I thank him for working with Senator Murray to move the budget. I will comment on that.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I now yield 3 minutes of the proponents' time to Senator Murray, the chairperson of the Budget Committee, who actually did pass a budget 5 months ago but has been precluded because of sheer, rigid, ideological posturing from being able to go to a conference, sit in a room with Paul Ryan, and work out what the budget of the United States of America should be. This is why we have gone from the greatest deliberative body to the greatest delay body. So I yield 3 minutes and any other time she wishes to consume to Senator Murray, who has done an outstanding job, and I wish people would follow her lead and let her go to the conference so we could have a budget.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington State for her comments because, as usual, they were clear, cogent, and compelling. We need to get a job done today. Our job today--am I correct--is passing a continuing resolution, which means we keep the funding at fiscal 2013 in place until we resolve other budgetary issues with the House. Is that correct?

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, we will be voting at 12:30 on four questions. Those four votes are cloture on the continuing resolution, waiver of a Budget Act on the point of order, the amendment that I offered on the continuing resolution, and final passage. But essentially it is all pretty much the same thing--it is four separate votes that get there. Our goal today is to send to the House of Representatives a continuing resolution, stripped of ideological riders, that keeps the government funded until November 15 while we work out other budgetary issues. The continuing resolution historically was always meant to be short-term to get us over problems, to keep the government functioning while we solve problems we have been working on, and it has always been historically not to have ideological riders attached to them. We the Democrats, hopefully with others who will join with us to find the sensible center--America always governs best when it finds the center, a sensible center--we want to find that and send it to the House where, No. 1, our continuing resolution will be until November 15. This gives us a couple of weeks to work these issues out. No. 2, to take out the ideological riders. The first rider is to defund President Obama's Affordable Care Act. We want to strip that out because it is now the law of the land. There is no need to keep fighting the same battle. Next, there is an ideological rider on how we structure paying our debt. That rider is a rigged game, that we pay China first before we pay other obligations to people here, debtors in our own country. We want to strip that out and then send them the continuing resolution, which is not new money. It keeps the Government operating until November 15 at fiscal 2013 levels. That is where we are. I want to explain, if we do not do this we could head to a government shutdown that is harmful to our country, it is harmful to our economy, and it is harmful to our standing in the world. In plain English, after debating the continuing resolution last Thursday, we now have these four votes. A vote to waive a point of order against the continuing resolution where we could end up with more sand in the gears. Where we are now is that the vote on the Senate amendment to the House CR, as I said, strips out partisan ideology, shortens the date and moves on so the House can look at it. A government shutdown is a serious matter. If we do not come together across the aisle, across the dome, across town, we will be facing a damaging government shutdown. Here are a few things that will happen. If we cannot enact a clean continuing resolution by October 1, our troops, including troops deployed overseas, will not be paid on time; 800,000 civil servants who serve the American people will be sent home and told they are nonessential. Shutting down the government will have an immediate and harmful effect on our economy. Small Business Administration approval of loans will be put on hold; important rural development housing and farm loan grants will be stopped. Our economy is struggling to pick up steam. The uncertainty that we will create in the marketplace, in our own country and in the world, will put on the brakes to our economy. It is irresponsible and unacceptable for this to happen. Every day, thousands of Federal workers keep Americans safe. We don't hear about them every day but they do make a difference. Every time a defective product is removed from the market, every time an inspector recommends a change to keep people safe in terms of approving the safety of our food supply or drug supply, every time a scammer or a schemer is arrested for fraud, the Federal Government and the people who work for them play an important role. In my own State, I represent the National Institutes of Health. Last spring, Director Dr. Francis Collins announced we had reduced cancer rates in this country by 15 percent. Instead of pinning a medal on the men and women who did the basic research that could then lead to the private sector inventing new pharmaceutical and biological products that would put that into clinical practice--instead of that, they had to announce a furlough. How would you like to be working at NIH right this minute and be told you are nonessential? You are working on a cure for cancer, you are trying to find out the causes of autism, you are trying to come up with a cure or at least cognitive stretchout for Alzheimer's--just talking about the A words--then you are told you are nonessential. They did not know that. The American people do not believe it. We have to avoid a government shutdown and a government showdown. What we need to be able to do today is to be sure we work on our amendments and make sure we have cloture on the continuing resolution. We have had substantial debate. It is now time to bring that together, waive the Budget Act and the point of order, pass my amendment to change the time to November 15, and then have final passage. The time to act is now. You hear in my voice great frustration. I am frustrated, not because of solutions I do not like--that is give and take in a legislative process. What I am frustrated about is the continual process of delay, where we not only throw sand in the gears of our ability to function, we are now throwing cement into those gears. I hope we can move. There are cool heads on both sides of the aisle. There are people on both sides of the aisle who have worked together and can come together. Let's pass this continuing resolution, have the House act so we can avoid a shutdown so that our focus is on solving the important issues facing our country. Yes, there are those who call for reducing the public debt. I support that. We can do that through a balanced approach: additional strategic cuts, a review of mandatory spending, and a look at closing tax loopholes. But there are other debts we have. We have the issue of chronic unemployment, of growing education unattainment, where our standing in the world is slipping. I worry that we will not fund the necessary research and development so, working with the private sector, we will come up with those new ideas that lead to new products, that lead to new jobs. DARPA, a government agency, helped create the Internet. Then the genius of our private sector unleashed a power that the world has never seen. This is what America is known for--discovery, entrepreneurship, moving our own country ahead. This is what I hope we will get back to. Let's get through this process. Let's get through this quagmire and let's keep America being what America can be. I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Reid-Mikulski amendment to the continuing resolution. Our amendment makes two important changes in the House CR. First the amendment clears out the toxic political item in the House CR--defunding the Affordable Care Act. It also removes the debt-limit provision that threatens the full faith and credit of the United States. It changes the date of the CR from December 15 to November 15 to see if we can't get to vote on an omnibus bill and end the sequester. We are out of time. The fiscal year ends in 3 days. Let's pass the Reid-Mikulski amendment, let's pass the CR, and let's keep America's government working as hard as its taxpayers.

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, it is now time to vote on final passage. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote for this. It will prevent a government shutdown. It will lay the groundwork for us to get to a solution on the long-term fiscal needs of our country, including to replace sequester and to come up with an approach to fund essential government services where we make investments that America desperately needs. If the Senate keeps this government open, it means continuing our critical services, it avoids a shutdown, and it lays the groundwork for solving our problems. I urge the adoption and passage of this bill. We yield back our remaining time.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Democratic amendment to the House continuing resolution. We have offered this amendment because its content offers a clear path forward to do three things: No. 1, avoid a government shutdown; No. 2, lay the groundwork for ending sequester for hopefully the next 2 years, which means finding a way to reduce our public debt in each of those years by $100 million; and, No. 3, get rid of the theatrical veto-bait-provocative amendments that are in the House bill calling for the defunding of the President's Affordable Care Act and also for the way they structure public debt. We offered this amendment because we think it is the best way forward. The American people expect us to do our job. It is Thursday morning, 10:45, and we are only now getting on the amendment. Why? Because for the last several days we had to put up with theatrical politics, rather than get the job done and begin deliberation. We have gone from being the greatest deliberative body in the world to the greatest delay body in the world. The American people are fed up, and so are many of us in the Senate. When all is said and done, more gets said than gets done. This is the time to act. We have an amendment on the floor that is open for full debate. I am absolutely for this, but we need to do the business of government to be able to do our job. We must replace the sequester and allow a 2014 Omnibus appropriations to move forward before the end of the year. That sentence alone shows what is wrong in communicating with the American people. Factually, it is accurate. It is absolutely truthful. But nobody understands sequester. Nobody understands the word omnibus and nobody understands what we are doing or, most of all, what we are not doing. Sequester was an invention by the Congress, working with the President, to say that we will reduce public debt over a 10-year period by $110 billion a year, do it in a balanced way--strategic cuts, a review of mandatory spending and additional revenue--and if we fail to do that, sequester triggers, which means across-the-board cuts--50 percent in Defense, 50 percent in domestic. The problem with across-the-board cuts is that it cuts good programs as well as programs that are dated, duplicative, or dysfunctional. I oppose that. I would rather make strategic cuts arrived at by the committee I chair--the Appropriations Committee. For the last year, our committee has done its due diligence. Our job is to review programs and to put them in the Federal checkbook and bring them to the floor for debate, for amendment, and then for passage and sending them to the President. What we want to do in our amendment is to change the date of December 15 in the House bill to November 15. That will keep the pressure on to get the deal needed so Congress can get to work and enact 12 fiscally responsible appropriations bills, lay the groundwork for canceling sequester for 2 years, and invest in the needs of America today and the needs of the future. This amendment is important for two reasons. It prevents a government shutdown. The President has already said he will veto any bill that defunds ObamaCare; he will veto any bill that undermines the full faith and credit of the United States. So you can huff and puff for 21 hours, but you can't blow ObamaCare away. I repeat: You can huff and puff for 21 hours, but you can't be the magic dragon that blows the Affordable Care Act away. So if we pass the House continuing resolution, the President will veto it, which means more wasted time in getting the job done, and our agencies, instead of doing their job and fulfilling their missions--making wise use of taxpayer money and being responsive to the American people--will be spending their energy in planning for a shutdown, which amounts to a slamdown. The President can sign the continuing resolution and keep the government open if we pass the Senate amendment, which will keep the government open until November 15 and gives us 1 month to arrive at pragmatic solutions. It cancels the provocative elements in it--the elimination of ObamaCare and the public debt--and also lays the groundwork for moving forward. There will be a few things that will happen if we can't enact a clean continuing resolution, meaning keeping the government open by October 1. There are consequences here. This isn't just about show business. The government has to be open for business. An estimated 800,000 civil servants will be sent home or furloughed. What does that mean? If you are an FBI agent during this time, you will be on your job, you will be at your duty station, but when you are working, you won't get paid. You will get an IOU. What does that say to people who put themselves in the line of fire? Shutting down the government means we will affect crucial research and lifesaving discoveries that will be put on hold. The NIH clinical center won't be able to admit new patients for new clinical trials. Weather forecasters, food safety inspectors, and those involved with public safety will be at their duty stations, but they are going to be earning IOUs and looking forward to across-the-board cuts, which means they could be furloughed when we have already told them there will be no cost-of-living increase for 3 years. We want to recruit the best and the brightest for the FBI, to oversee our drug approval process, or to be border control agents--work that is dirty and dangerous out there. What are we doing here? We show a contempt for the people who work for the government, and that also shows contempt for the people who pay for the government. Our government should be working as hard as the people who pay the taxes to support the government. The way they work hard is to put the money in there for the mission and purpose of these agencies, insist they do their jobs, and then we insist we get rid of the dated, the duplicative, and the dysfunctional. We have laid the groundwork for doing this. In fact, we have been doing it all year long. I chair the Appropriations Committee. It is made up of 12 subcommittees. You will be hearing from my subcommittee chairmen throughout the day. I am so proud of them. For the last year they have listened. They have taken the President's budget and they have analyzed it. They have conducted hearings. They have reviewed it, they have scrubbed it--as I said, they have analyzed it and squeezed it. I am proud of them. Out of what they have done they are ready to bring to the Senate floor legislation that makes wise use of taxpayer dollars. They have listened at every single hearing to inspectors general, where we learn about the dated, dysfunctional, or duplicative, and they are ready to move. But we cannot move if we continue having theatrical showdown politics. This will have grave impact. When we hear shutdown politics and eventually slowdown through sequester, what we are facing here will have a negative impact on our economy. It will add to the uncertainty for businesses to make wise decisions. It will also slow down, in a way, the impact to jobs because we fund infrastructure and other needed programs. It will impact public safety and it will impact future generations because of the big hit on research and development that comes up with the new ideas for the new jobs. Later on today I will be talking about the NIH, which is in my State. Yes, the NIH. Because of NIH funding, thousands of people work in Maryland but thousands of people are working for the United States of America. And at the end of the day, they are trying to come up with cures--cures that can be opportunities to create--so we are talking about saving lives, doing the basic research that then helps us get those jobs in biomedical and pharmaceuticals, and also to improve the lives of our people, improve our economy, and get the job done. I will have more to say, but right now I want to turn to Senator Pryor, who is the chair of the agriculture subcommittee. He is a new chairman, but he is not new to getting the job done. In fact, we refer to him as ``Tightwad'' Pryor. He has looked at the programs, he has analyzed how we are truly going to get value for the dollar and at the same time feed the hungry here and around the world, and also make sure that important, vibrant sector of our economy--the agricultural industry--is viable. I yield the floor for Senator Pryor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, I rise to oppose the continuing resolution the House passed last week on a party-line vote of 230 to 189. On behalf of all of the people of Maryland and all of the people of the United States, I am so frustrated; they should have a government that they can count on to operate, that they could count on to work as hard as they do; they should be able to count on having the government they pay for. However, what we have here is a manufactured crisis, with histrionics and theatrical politics attempting to bring us to the brink of a shutdown. It is shutdown, slam-down politics. The CR that was sent over to us is loaded with political ideology. What does it do? First it wants to defund the President's Affordable Care Act and take health care away from those who need it. It also is designed to create a crisis over the debt ceiling and undermine the full faith and credit of the United States. Our President has been clear that he will veto any bill with these toxic political riders. He is right, and we will support him. Much will be said in the media over the next several days about something called the continuing resolution. Well, here we go again using Washington-speak that nobody in America understands. Here we go with budget-speak. And the American people are saying: What are they trying to accomplish? Well, let me explain it in a straight-talk way. A continuing resolution is a straightforward, simple act where we extend the government's funding beyond October 1 to a date certain. It is meant to continue the funding. It is always, historically, meant to be, No. 1, short-term and, No. 2, a stopgap measure as we work on getting final resolution of budgetary and fiscal matters. It is also designed to keep the U.S. Government open and functioning while we work out our difficulties. So that is what a continuing resolution is meant to be. It was never meant to be a vehicle for controversial, provocative, poke-it-in-your- eye and stick-it-to-you controversial legislation. It was never meant to be a negotiating chip for a grander bargain to resolve issues, nor was it ever designed to be a weapon in the fight over the size and role of government. That is for the authorizing committee. That is what we do in our appropriations committees at the subcommittee level. That is what Senator Murray in her Budget Committee worked on when we passed the budget. That is where those fights come in, not at the end of the fiscal year. Here we have the same old tricks and techniques we have seen year after year since President Obama was elected. They not only want to throw sand in the gears of the Obama administration, they want to throw cement into the gears of the functioning of government. Well, I think that is outrageous. The House continuing resolution is a manufactured crisis driving us toward a shutdown. We have plenty of real crises in our country. How about the crisis of sustained chronic unemployment at 7 percent or higher in many of my communities or in certain sectors, such as construction, or in the rural parts of my State? There is also a real crisis for those who need health care. There is a real crisis for those who are seeking higher education and can't afford it. And look at our crisis in the foreign policy arena. On the very day the President is speaking at the U.N. to project American power, the other side is trying on the Senate floor to make us powerless to function. If they want to project American power, they should be willing to show that the greatest parliamentary, deliberative body in the world can be parliamentary and deliberative in solving our problems. If they want to project power, it starts here, showing we can govern ourselves. We start by acting right and focusing on solving real problems with real solutions and getting off of this brinkmanship. The President has said he will veto it, so the riders are veto bait. This is all designed to use a lot of time and a lot of resources. I was elected to the Senate to be a legislator, not a prop for a political farce. This is not Gilbert and Sullivan, this is the real deal. The American people are fed up with these manufactured crises, and so am I. So let me give my view about where we want to go. And who is the ``we?'' I believe it is not only the Democrats in the Senate, but I believe there are pragmatists on both sides of the aisle who want to find a sensible center where we can achieve fiscal stability, begin to draw down our public debt but also have an opportunity to be progrowth in our country, where we focus on important issues of national security, rebuilding America with infrastructure, rebuilding our human infrastructure in terms of our educational system and also our research and development, coming up with the new ideas that will lead to the new jobs in the new century. The way we want to do this and the way I am suggesting is the way the American people would like us to vote. The other party would like us to have a continuing resolution until December 15. That is one more gimmick to bring us to Christmas Eve, where we will have a lot of theatrics and jingle bells-jingle bells while we try to solve our situation. I want a short-term CR. I would like one between now and November 15--not long term, not something just to dilly and dither. I am tired of dilly and dither. So I suggest a short-term CR for sometime around mid-November. The purpose of that would be that we would use that opportunity to get to a vote in December that would be on the funding of all of our bills, arrived at by a vote here, a conference committee with the House, where our spending would be sensible, it would be affordable, it would meet compelling human need, the national security issues of the United States, and would rebuild our infrastructure. This isn't hard, but in order to get that, we need to clear out the toxic political items in the CR. So I want a clean CR. A clean CR means getting rid of the political riders of defunding ObamaCare and striking the debt limit rider. Second, we need to have a shorter date. My recommendation would be around November 15 because the longer term CR means more autopilot functioning of government--in other words, more government dysfunction. November 15 keeps the pressure on both sides of the aisle to get the job done. What is getting the job done? First of all, we would like to cancel sequester, and we would like to cancel sequester in a balanced way. What is sequester? We have to come up with about $110 billion in debt reduction. We can do that through additional strategic cuts. As an appropriator, I am willing to look at them. Secondly, revenue. What about those loopholes Mitt Romney talked about? Let's bring some of those back and examine them. Let's look at some of the items in mandatory spending. This is the way we can enact our bills, invest in and protect our country. Our Nation faces long-term fiscal challenges. It does demand action from the Congress. But the place for those negotiations is not in a continuing resolution. It belongs in the Budget Committee. And the six Republican Senators who are planning to filibuster this week are the same ones who threatened and blocked the budget the Senate passed going to conference in the House. So they blocked the budget. Then they blame us because we don't have a budget. Go figure. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the appropriators, have marked up annual funding bills. We are ready to make sure we can do our work, but we need the Budget Committee to give us a top line. We can't get to conference because Republicans have objected. Now they want to have a simple stopgap that leads to a showdown and a shutdown. If we don't come together, we will have very serious consequences. If we do not enact a clean continuing resolution by October 1 that enables us to get to a sensible outcome in early December, the government will shut down. Doesn't that look great for the United States of America. We say to emerging democracies all over the world, Look at us. We need to show we can govern. It has not only consequences in the way we are viewed in the world; it provides uncertainty for business, it will be terrible for our economy, and it will have a direct impact on jobs. Business will not know what the government is going to do and so they don't know what they can do, so they will not be spending to create jobs. All we are doing is creating more chaos. We want to be sure the Small Business Administration approves loans-- they need to be open to do that--that rural housing development and farm loans are able to go out so we can help where that is needed. We need to make sure crucial lifesaving discoveries at NIH happen. Right now if we have a shutdown, people will not be able to be admitted to the National Institutes of Health clinical trials and programs because they don't know if they will be continued. Weather forecasters will be told they are not an essential service. We are now looking at the impact on Federal law enforcement. I could go item by item. I will talk more about these items as time goes on. I will conclude by saying during this last year on both sides of the aisle the Appropriations Committee has functioned well. I thank not only my subcommittee chairmen--I see Senator Durbin, who chairs the defense subcommittee--but I also wish to thank the Republicans. My vice chairman of the committee, Senator Shelby of Alabama, supported me at every step of the process. We functioned with civility, intellectual rigor, and open amendments during the committee process. It was transparent. We had ``yes'' votes, we had ``no'' votes. But everybody had their day and everybody had their say. We were able to move our process forward, although we disagreed sometimes on the funding level for this or the funding level for that. But we came to a conclusion. I wish to thank them for their cooperation in the process. Now we are here, where we could take the next step. Yes, we have to debate some of those line items. We do need to debate some of those programs. But we can't move forward unless we resolve the shutdown showdown. Let's pass a continuing resolution that takes us to mid-November. Let's make that continuing resolution a clean CR, which means let's get rid of the political riders. Our goal in December is that we pass an omnibus bill that is affordable, sensible, meets compelling human needs, national security needs, our human infrastructure, and also lays the groundwork for new jobs by funding research and development, at the same time to cancel sequester, because we have arrived at it in a balanced way where, yes, we can make additional strategic cuts, where we also need to look at some of the items of mandatory spending, and let's look at some revenue. I think we can do it. If we want to project American power, the way to do that is right now show that we can govern. Let's not get ourselves into a box where we are heading to a showdown. Let's not get ourselves in a situation where we end up with a shutdown. This will not be a way that builds confidence, builds our economy, and makes America continue to be as strong as it can be. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise to speak about ObamaCare. When we passed the law, it was called the Affordable Care Act. And before he leaves the floor, I would like to compliment the Senator from Montana on the important and crucial role he played in passing the Affordable Care Act. It was through his excellent stewardship in the Finance Committee, where we could expand access to health care, modernize the way we do it to go from volume medicine to value-based medicine and to be able to expand our access in a way that also was fiscally prudent. He also led the way in expanding the children's health initiative. I know later on he is planning in his life a new future for himself. I want him to know that while he is thinking about living a different life, he really impacted the lives of many people. I thank him personally in a heartfelt way for the way he has improved the lives of people and particularly the lives of children and women in this country.

Ms. MIKULSKI. So, Mr. President, here we are. We are having a national debate on the Senate floor about whether we should provide access to health care to all Americans and be able to do it in a way that is fiscally prudent and modernizes the way we deliver health care to emphasize value health care over volume health care. And we are having this debate even though we passed the legislation in 2010. I thought that when you passed a bill and it was signed into law, it was the law of the land but, no, here we go again. We are trying to take legislation that was passed and undo it by defunding it. I don't know what we are doing here. First there was an attempt to delegitimize President Obama. He has won two elections. The American people said: We want Barack Obama to be our President. When he ran the second time, we passed the health care initiative. That was another affirmation that there was public support for that bill. Now here we are, on the eve of the funding for fiscal year 2013 expiring, and there is a manufactured crisis bringing the government to the brink of a shutdown because a few in the other party are sore losers. They lost the election. They lost the battle to get the votes when they had the opportunity to vote and amend and change the Affordable Care Act. So now here we are, and I think it is an outrageous use of the Senate's time, and we need to be able to move on with the serious business of governing the country. I worry about unemployment in our country. I worry about the fact that our children are no longer achieving the best in the world. I worry about my small to midsized business having access to capital. I know many here called this bill a job killer. Do you know what is a job killer? Our behavior in the Senate. This gridlock, deadlock, hammerlock on the Senate means we cannot do the business of the country in an orderly and predictable way. Therefore, when businesses need to plan what are going to be the rules of the game coming out of the U.S. Government, they are not going to know. So if they are planning what they should do about their business--should they expand? What should they do--they need certainty. As long as we play brinkmanship politics, we cannot have certainty. One thing is certain, though: We definitely should keep ObamaCare. I am happy to call it ObamaCare because I think Obama does care. But I think all of us here who are Democrats certainly in the Senate and many on the other side of the aisle also support the fact that we want to increase universal access. So let's go to what the legislation meant. When we passed the Affordable Care Act, No. 1, it provided access to health care for more people. When we passed that bill, 42 million Americans did not have access to health care. So that means that here in the United States of America, if you needed a doctor, that didn't mean you would have one. If you needed a prescription drug, it didn't mean you could afford to buy one. In many instances, this was a hardship on many families. Also what the Affordable Care Act did is it ended abuses of health insurance companies. When we passed that legislation, people were denied health care on the basis of a preexisting condition. That often meant that for children in the United States of America, if they had juvenile diabetes, if they had cerebral palsy, their families couldn't get health care insurance because these children had preexisting conditions. If you were a woman, it was even worse. Pregnancy was considered a preexisting condition, and in some instances where a woman had a premature birth and a C-section, she was denied health care because that was considered a preexisting condition. In eight States, if someone was a victim of domestic violence, that was counted as a preexisting condition and they didn't have access to health care. Now, what is that? So in the Affordable Health Care Act we changed that law, so we created the opportunities that the punitive practices of insurance companies would not be a barrier to being able to get health insurance. Then there was this other issue of lifetime caps. That means that if you had a condition and you hit a lifetime cap, then tough luck for you. What happens if you have a child with hemophilia? That is a hard thing for that child to face the rest of his or her life, and for the family. Don't you think there should be no caps on a benefit? What happens if you are struggling with cancer and you hit a cap? It doesn't mean your need for treatment ends; it just means your insurance company won't pay for it. Well, we lifted the annual lifetime caps. For us women, the double insult of paying more for health insurance simply because we were women was repealed. In the Affordable Care Act, there is no gender discrimination. We found in our hearings that women paid 2 to 10 times as much for their health insurance as men of the same age and health status. We didn't think that was fair, and we changed it. We also improved health care for seniors. No. 1, we added new Medicare benefits, such as free cancer screenings. Early detection means better treatment and a better chance of surviving that dread ``C'' word. It also provided an annual free checkup where someone could go and could get an identification of those silent killers early on. So if you have high blood pressure, if you have high blood sugar and we found those early, we could intervene before they either moved to a deadly situation or worse. We know undetected high blood pressure could lead to a stroke or to death. So we helped get better health care and better value for our seniors. Then there is the prescription drug benefit. The prescription drug benefit--called Part D--had something in it called the doughnut hole. The doughnut hole was hard to swallow because it meant that once a senior's drug costs exceeded a certain amount, they went into not a doughnut hole but a dark hole and they had to pay for the full cost until they reached a catastrophic threshold. For many people with chronic conditions--not only those dramatic things like cancer but a chronic condition like diabetes--they could reach that doughnut hole pretty quickly. But that is exactly what enables you to manage your blood sugar--working with your doctor, following a program of diet and exercise, but you still need medication to help control that blood sugar. If you don't get that medication, you then could be headed for worse problems related to diabetic neuropathy, to vision loss, to the need for dialysis. You need to be in a program that you can follow and that you can afford. That is why closing the doughnut hole was so important. It saves lives, and it saves money. I could go on to other examples about what is in the Affordable Care Act. There were many advances in terms of women, and there were many advances in terms of children. But I want people to know--because I am getting a lot of vitriolic tweets that somehow or another Maryland isn't being served. When I looked at the data from our own State's health commissioner, 48,000 young adults in Maryland were able to go on their parents' plans and have health insurance while they look for a job or finish their education. Also, 485,000 Marylanders on Medicare were able to get that annual checkup, and 72,000 Marylanders were able to participate in eliminating the doughnut hole. That saved them on the average $700 a year, for a total of $51 million that was pumped back into the Maryland economy to do other things and create jobs for other people. So when they say they want to defund ObamaCare, what is it they then want to replace it with? Do they want to go back to Big Insurance and their punitive practices of denying coverage for a child with a preexisting condition? Let them call the parent of a juvenile diabetic or a child with cerebral palsy. Do they want to defend the part where young people can't stay on their parents' plan until they are 26? Do they want to make that phone call and say: We know you are working hard to find a job or finish your education. Oh no. Do they want to eliminate the caps on benefits? Do they want to eliminate closing the doughnut hole? No. They just say they want to eliminate it. Well, I want to eliminate this from the CR, so let me tell you where I come in as the chair of the full committee. In a very short time, the majority leader will offer an amendment to the CR sent over by the House. I want to get rid of this brinkmanship, slam-down, showdown politics. The amendment we will be offering will strike the provision to defund ObamaCare. It will strike the provision that was put in on the debt ceiling which means that the way they want to structure it-- what the House sent over--is we pay China first and Americans at the end of the line. I then want to set into motion working with our Democrats--it is not only us Democrats--to have a CR.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I want to have an amendment to strike the defunding of ObamaCare, strike the language on the debt limit, and move the date for the next continuing resolution from December 15 to November 15 so that we can get to a situation where we focus on completing our budget, getting an omnibus, and eliminating sequester for 2 years. I want to get rid of the theatrical politics and get into the real business of running and helping govern America in a way that provides jobs, economic opportunities, and ensures our national security. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Ms. MIKULSKI

Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, what is the pending parliamentary business?