Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Maryland, who has argued so well that the time has come to take a bold step in favor of equality, in favor of fairness in passing employment nondiscrimination. I too rise to speak to the importance of this action. The Declaration of Independence in its second paragraph says, in words that are famous and well-known to all Americans: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Certainly that vision of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is infused into everything we pursue in this Nation in the success of individuals, the success of our families, the success of our communities, and the success of our Nation. The debate on which we are about to embark is deeply connected to this issue because certainly the ability to be free from discrimination in the pursuit of a job and to be free from discrimination in the course of employment is central to that pursuit of happiness. It is central to the issue of liberty. I rise today to say how important and vital this is to millions of Americans for whom discrimination has blocked and compromised the vision laid out in the Declaration of Independence. This bill, this framework for ending discrimination in employment, S. 815, is born with a lot of bipartisan partners whom I wish to thank at this moment. It was back in 2009, my first year in the Senate, that Senator Kennedy and his team asked me to take the leadership of this bill that he had held near and dear to his heart and to carry the torch forward in fighting for fairness in employment, fighting for an end to discrimination. Since that time, many have stepped forward to be partners in this journey. Senator Collins was the first chief cosponsor on the Republican side, stepping forward and taking her voice, her energy, her experience, and her insight in bringing that to bear. After 2 years, she passed the baton to Senator Mark Kirk, who had been a long-time champion of the vision of fairness and equality for all Americans. Both of them have done an outstanding and extraordinary job in forwarding this dialogue. On the Democratic side we have, first and foremost Senator Kennedy, who carried the leadership for many years, including back in 1996 when we had this on the floor of the Senate--and I will return to that in due course. He was a champion for civil rights in many different parts of our world, including race discrimination, gender discrimination, and discrimination against the LGBT community. Senator Harkin, who chairs the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, carried this bill forward through two hearings in 2009 and 2012, and then brought it to markup this past year and is prepared to send it to the floor. So I thank Senator Harkin for his leadership. Senator Tammy Baldwin, who came to us with her own personal story and her experience with leadership in the House, has extended the conversation here in the Senate and has carried on so many individual meetings to speak to these core issues of equality, fairness, and opportunity. So I thank all the bipartisan sponsors, and I thank all of those who last night said, yes, we should debate this issue. We should debate this issue of discrimination and blocking full opportunity for millions of Americans. So shortly we will be engaged in that debate. After the Declaration of Independence, we had the preamble to the Constitution. This also is well known to Americans across our land. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States of America. So here we have this core concept of justice and the blessings of liberty for that generation and the generations that would follow. But what exactly is liberty? What is freedom? President Johnson, in 1965, at a commencement address at Howard University, said: Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society--to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to a school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others. I think that is a pretty good description of what liberty and freedom mean--a right to participate fully in American society in every respect: at the voting booth, in the job place, and in the public square, as you would choose to participate. So the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which ends discrimination against our LGBT community, is rooted in the best of American values. It is rooted in the concepts of liberty and freedom in our founding documents and in our founding vision. It is rooted in the concept of fundamental fairness. How unfair is it if an individual who is seeking to apply for a job cannot have the full opportunity for that job, the full opportunity to thrive because of discrimination? How fair is it that because of who you are outside of the workplace you are fired from the workplace? Let us think of the Golden Rule. We all learned this early in life-- that we should treat others according to how we would want to be treated. And we all want to be treated with the respect and dignity President Johnson referred to. It is the vision of equality that was in the Declaration of Independence, and it is the vision of opportunity that is rooted so deeply in the American Dream--the idea that in America, if you work and study hard, you can do just about anything. That is the vision my father gave me when he took me to the schoolhouse doors when I was small and said: If you go through those doors and you study hard, here in America you can do just about anything. But discrimination takes away from that vision of opportunity. It says: If you study hard, here in America you can do just about anything, unless you have a certain color of skin, unless you are a certain gender, unless you have a certain gender identity or sexual orientation. We have struck down many of those barriers. We have advanced on this vision of equality, but we have further to go. That is what this debate is about. In 29 States, an individual can still be fired from their job, they can still be told not to apply in the first place because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity--in 29 States. It should not be the case that the vision of equality and fairness and opportunity happens to occur on one side of a State line but it is destroyed if you cross that State line. This vision of opportunity and fairness and equality in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence didn't say the vision is only if you live in particular States, only if you live in the 21 States that have protections for our lesbian, gay, and bisexual community; only if you live in the 17 States that have employment protection for our transgender community. The journey of this legislation began in 1974. It was a year after Stonewall. It was 39 years ago that Bella Abzug and Ed Koch introduced in the House of Representatives legislation that would ban job discrimination. It took another 19 years before such legislation was introduced here in the Senate and where hearings were held in the Labor and Human Resources Committee in 1994. It was 2 years later the bill was debated here in this Chamber--right here in this very room. The outcome was 49 for and 50 against, with Vice President Gore sitting in the presiding chair where the Senator from Hawaii now sits. Vice President Gore had already clarified where he stood, so we were missing one Senator and one vote, and the result was that it took 17 years to again hold this conversation in this Chamber--17 years of discrimination in so many States across America. It is time to end that discrimination and enhance the vision of equality and fairness. Today, we have a bill before us with 55 cosponsors. When we think about that 49-50 vote 17 years ago, we might think: Well, isn't this a done deal? There are 55 cosponsors and you only need 51 or 50 plus the Vice President to pass a bill in the Senate. But it is not a done deal. Because in the last decade and a half, the Senate has gone from being a simple majority Chamber, as envisioned in the Constitution, to being a Chamber where every action takes a supermajority vote. We needed a supermajority of 60 to get on to the bill last night, and everyone anticipates we will need 60 votes to get off the bill; that is, to close debate and have a final vote. That is not the Senate of the past 200 years, but it is the Senate of the last 10 years, where the courtesy of extended debate has been turned into the veto of a supermajority. That is where we stand right now. Therefore, we need 60 votes. We had 61 votes last night to get onto this debate, and I thank every one of those 61 Senators who stood up and said: Yes, after 17 years it is time to debate this issue; yes, it is right to consider the core issue of fairness to millions of Americans; yes, it is right to recognize that we should have a debate about the impact of discrimination on the ability of the individual to have full opportunity in our Nation. Have no doubt. Discrimination is alive and well. I will share with you the story of Laura from Portland, OR, before Oregon had nondiscrimination clauses, which we adopted in 2007. Laura wrote that from 1980 to 1996 she worked for the Josephine County Sheriff's Office in Grants Pass, OR. She had the rank of sergeant. She was promoted often. She worked in a variety of capacities, including as a SWAT team commander, as a detective of the major crimes unit, and in the narcotics task force. During her 16 years, she says: I received numerous commendations, including commendations for removing an automobile accident victim from a burning vehicle, delivering a baby alongside a roadside, and disarming an armed man intent on harming himself. She was awarded for her expertise and diligence shown in a number of complicated criminal cases. She was named Deputy of the Year in 1994. She taught law enforcement classes at Rogue Community College and at the Oregon Police Academy. She had a distinguished employment record. On Labor Day 1995, Laura was in a remote area when a police dog attacked her and did some damage to her leg and she was put on administrative leave. During the month that followed, her storage unit was broken into. Out of that break-in of her storage unit came information she was a transgender individual, and because of that she was fired. She had a stellar career in every aspect, but a break-in into her storage unit, plus discrimination, ended that career. She ends her commentary by saying: Had employment nondiscrimination laws been in effect, I likely would have continued serving the citizens of Josephine County to this day. We know from her employment record she would have served well. But that was before Oregon adopted antidiscrimination legislation. Many people have written to share their stories. Terri from Aloha wrote: Thank you for continuing the fight against discrimination. I am retired now, but I did lose a job when I was young, for being a lesbian. Until later in life, I stayed deep in the closet after that to keep from losing another job. All of the non-discrimination bills help us define who we are as a people and underscores our belief in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for every American. By one survey, far more than a third of LGBT individuals have experienced some form of harassment or discrimination in the workplace. That has a tremendous impact on the pursuit of happiness. That is a tremendous shrinking of freedom and liberty as envisioned in our founding documents, our vision for this Nation. There are a number of issues which have been raised as colleagues have talked about this bill before it comes to the floor, and I wish to address some of them. First, this bill is fully inclusive. It includes the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. It should be fully inclusive because discrimination is wrong. Discrimination shrinks opportunity. Discrimination is an offense against liberty and freedom in our Nation and full participation in society. So of course this bill should be fully inclusive, as it is in 17 of the 21 States that have laws on their books right now. A second issue has been concern about lawsuits. We heard this yesterday from the Speaker of the House. But we have all of these pilots, if you will, with 21 States with measures on the books with all kinds of experience. So I asked the General Accounting Office to do an updated study on the issue of lawsuits, and what did we find? There has been no abuse. There has been no extraordinary stream of unfounded lawsuits against businesses, no damage to business, none at all. In Oregon, LGBT discrimination claims are less than 2 percent of the total number of employment discrimination claims. That is less than 1 out of 50. In other States it has ranged from 2 to 6 percent. That is a small number, and that is why the business community has remained so supportive. In fact, close to 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have nondiscrimination practices they have adopted on their own. They have adopted them because it is good business. Nike, in my home State of Oregon, says that ``ENDA is good for business, for our employees, and for our communities.'' The Nike statement continues: Inclusive, nondiscrimination policies ``enable us to attract and retain the best and brightest people around the world.'' That is why Fortune 500 companies have lined up to adopt nondiscrimination provisions--because what is good for liberty and what is good for opportunity is good for business. And the GAO study shows that any claim that there has been a problem with excessive lawsuits is simply false. A third concern is about the religious exemption. The religious exemption in this bill is deeply founded on title VII of the Civil Rights Act, so there is a whole history of interpretation and understanding exactly where the boundaries are. This is the same religious exemption that was voted in favor of in the U.S. House of Representatives by a measure of 420 to 25. Mr. President, 420 to 25 said this is the right foundation to make sure we create the balance for religious organizations. There are others who are concerned that, simply, the American people are not ready for this discussion--despite the fact that it has been adopted in 21 States, despite the fact that we have had many related issues before the American public up for discussion, including hate crimes. We have the Matthew Shepard hate crimes act; we had don't ask, don't tell; we had a Supreme Court discussion about marriage equality. Certainly Americans are well familiar with this. In fact, 80 percent of Americans think we have already done this. I was explaining to my daughter Brynne about this bill, this fight against discrimination and its terrible impacts on liberty, freedom, and opportunity. She said: But, Dad, people can't fire others because they are lesbian or gay, right? That is not possible. I said: Sweetie, it was possible right here in Oregon until a couple years ago when in 2007 we adopted nondiscrimination policies and nondiscrimination statutes for our State. She just shook her head. It took me back to when I was in high school and I was hearing about Jim Crow and discrimination against those with dark skin instead of lighter skin, and I thought that is not possible, not under our vision of opportunity and equality in our Constitution and our pursuit of happiness. It is not possible. But it was possible, and it was very real well after I was born. But we ended that discrimination, and it is time to end this discrimination. This is about the individual, but it is about our Nation as well. It is certainly about the vision of the Declaration of Independence, which has the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the founding motivation. It certainly is about our Constitution, which says that the core purpose is to secure the blessings of liberty because certainly you do not have liberty if you do not have the full opportunity to participate in the workplace across America. Senator Ted Kennedy carried this battle until days before his death. The quote I am about to share is from August 5, 2009. He died just 20 days later. This may well have been one of his last public comments and introducing the 2009 bill may well have been one of his last legislative acts. He said: The promise of America will never be fulfilled as long as justice is denied to even one among us. I urge my colleagues, take a stand for equality. Take a stand for fundamental fairness. Take a stand for the vision of the pursuit of happiness embedded in our Constitution. Take a stand for justice for all. Support this bill.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise to continue the series of comments my colleagues have been making about the situation we find ourselves in at this moment, with our government shut down and with the possibility of a default on the payments of our Federal Government. This situation is virtually unprecedented, to be in a situation of near default. I want to step back from the immediate arguments over what the answer looks like to understand that we have wandered far outside the normal, orderly lines of legislative debate. Legislative debate is like a baseball game. Folks come together, and some want plan A, some want to oppose plan A, and one team wins and one team loses. In this case, we can go back to the health care debate. Some folks wanted a health care plan that would put millions of folks without insurance into insurance and have a number of systematic reforms that would help Americans and to end abuses in the insurance industry. They wanted to create competition between companies so that customers; that is, citizens, could compare policies and thereby get a better deal, and encourage companies to drop their prices. This debate now goes back quite a while, to 2009, 2010. The side that wanted the improved health care won. The other side normally says, Well, we will be back next year. We will be back with some changes in team members, as in baseball, and we will debate this again. Instead of calling to have another legislative debate down the line, those who lost asked for the umpire to declare that the losing team had won. This is acceptable; that is, turning to our Supreme Court and asking them if we had violated any of the constitutional provisions that guide our Nation. In this case the answer came back, and the answer was, no, the health care plan was constitutional and it would go forward. So now the losing team, instead of saying we are going to debate this with the public, we are going to try to get our point of view across and get people elected who support it, said, We are going to hold the crowd hostage and threaten to burn down the stadium. If a person is attending a baseball game, we know that is outside the normal rules of competition. We create these rules in a democracy so we can have an orderly process by which to consider the viewpoints of our constituents and make decisions, but threatening to hold the American people hostage is outside of the rules. Threatening to have our national government default and burn down our economy is outside the rules. Yet that is where we stand today. Great harm, even as I speak, is coming to our communities across the Nation. This harm may not touch some of the Members of this body who may have the financial foundation to not be particularly concerned about what happens to others. But I would encourage them to go live a few days in a working-class community and find out how this impacts families across our Nation. Not only are those families who work for the government not getting their salaries as well as being furloughed, but they are not then spending their funds in the local community, which creates an impact on all kinds of other groups. It isn't just in that direct employment. We have a situation with, say, those who are affected by food stamps. If the first day of the month comes and food stamps are not available, they don't go to the stores and buy groceries, so the stores are affected. The list goes on and on in all kinds of ways. In fact, I can turn to my home State of Oregon to demonstrate some things known to me that maybe folks haven't considered. I have here a letter from the Port of Astoria. The Port of Astoria, in order for them to receive oceangoing ships, has to have its slips dredged to a certain depth; otherwise, those ships can't dock. This letter basically is about how the government shutdown is affecting their ability to dredge and how the inability to dredge may have a profound economic consequence on the community. The port writes, ``Every year the Port of Astoria is required to dredge to maintain operations.'' They have done that in various ways for the last 23 years. The letter goes on through all kinds of details of the process through which dredging occurs. On the third page, it gets down to this: ``Our biggest issue at this stage is the government shutdown has prevented our consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service. . . . '' Without that consultation, they cannot satisfy the ESA requirements of section 7 of the Clean Water Act. The letter goes on to say: This is the only element that is holding us up. . . . You may think: Well, if they do not dredge on time, what is the big deal? To Astoria it is a very big deal. I continue with the letter: If we are not able to dredge soon, this Port and this community could suffer immense economic damages to the tune of 5-6 million dollars of direct economic funds per vessel that fails to dock at the Port of Astoria or 10-12 million dollars of direct economic impact per month. That is based on the fact that there are a couple major vessels per month. The letter goes on to say: Furthermore, if one vessel strikes the bottom [of the river] the industry and our investors, clients and tenants will be in an uproar and our entire business will be blacklisted on the international trade market. That would be terrible, to have a ship hit the bottom and have the Port of Astoria completely shut down as a result of the fact that they cannot consult--as they point out, that part of this is their ability to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service. That is just one sizable impact for a community. There are thousands of these occurring across the country. Let me take another example. We have a company in Oregon that produces a particular device that it exports, and it needs an export license to do so; otherwise, it cannot send its items abroad to its customer. Right now it has a big stockpile of a shipment it needs to send out. Well, they cannot get the export license because the government is shut down. This is creating a big cashflow issue because they cannot receive the funds until they ship the item, which means huge potential damage to the company--in other words, something that may not have been thoroughly thought through. What about the rural areas in our States? Some will be surprised to find out that you have a lot more government workers per capita in rural areas than in urban areas. Many parts of my State are forested, and the forests are owned either by the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Forest Service--it is owned by the national government, in other words. If the folks are not there because the government is shut down, it has a direct impact. In fact, right now, the U.S. Forest Service is issuing directions on how folks who are in the middle of logging have to shut down, skid the logs they have cut, quit felling any more, and basically clean up and clear out--in the middle of an operation. That does not just mean losses for the company that is logging, it also means a loss of saw logs for the sawmill, which means layoffs or a shutdown at the sawmill. Well, you can start to see how the consequences roll through the economy. How about the superfund site in the Portland Harbor? There is an intense effort going on to get a plan to be able to clean up that superfund site. Negotiations are underway between the industries that populate that stretch and the Environmental Protection Agency. Well, it is very important to move forward to meet deadlines. How are you going to move forward if the folks are not at the EPA? If we go back to a timber company, it is not just the immediate impact, it is the impact a year out, because the folks who are planning the sales for a year out cannot plan those sales if they are shut down or if they are furloughed. They cannot plan those sales. And they have to have teams of biologists and folks evaluate every aspect of every sale to prepare it, put it up for auction. If you cannot put it up for auction, somebody does not buy it, there is no cutting, and then the logging companies and the mills are hurt. This is not acceptable. What we have is a series of fiscal irresponsibilities by the group within the Senate and the House that has been blocking the budget and appropriations process. Fiscally irresponsible--let me lay that out. It is fiscally irresponsible to block the Budget Committee for the last 6 months from having a conference committee. Yet a small group has come to this floor and repeatedly objected to the conference committee meeting. Without that budget, you cannot have common numbers for the Senate and the House. That blocks the spending bills--known here as appropriations bills--so the spending bills cannot be put together. Or if they are put together, they are based on a different number than the House has, which means those become deadlocked. That leads to a continuing resolution, which means continuing what we are already doing rather than having a new spending bill. That is a waste of money because it means we are going to keep doing things that we know are not working instead of doing the things we know are working better. That is why you have an annual appropriations or spending process so you can cast aside the things that are not working and do the things that are working. So it is wasteful to block the budget and appropriations process. Then we have this government shutdown. What does this mean? This means less income because of less economic activity, and it means more expenses because of more safety net responsibilities, which means more deficit and more debt. So this group that is blocking the budget and appropriations process is responsible for increasing the deficit and increasing our debt. Then let's fast forward to the threat of not paying our bills. I think everyone in America knows, as a family, if you do not pay your bills, your credit score goes down and you have to pay a higher interest rate when you borrow. It is the same with the Federal Government. There are some in this body who have said: Well, let's make sure we pay our Treasury bonds, make good on our debt obligations, and let's just not pay other obligations. Anyone who has had a credit score knows that no matter what obligation you fail in, it becomes part of your credit score. It raises the interest. You can go for your home loan and say: I have always made my house payment, and they are like: Yes, but you did not pay your utility bill, you did not pay your car payment. That means you are a higher risk. You say: But I have always paid my house bill, always paid my mortgage. It does not matter. It shows that you are stressed and you do not have a consistent exercise of responsibility in paying your bills. So there is no easy out, despite that my colleagues have come to this floor, this Chamber, and said: It is not a big deal. They are, simply put, wrong. If they had come to the Committee on Banking, they could have heard expert after expert after expert say, essentially: You are wrong. All your bills matter. All your bills affect your credit rating. When your credit rating goes down, your interest rates go up. It is very expensive for the government, and it is wasted money, money that is buying us nothing--nothing. It is just paying more for the borrowing you have to do. It is not just government that pays. It is the families who pay. They have to pay higher interest on their mortgage, a higher payment on their home loan, if you will, their home equity loan, a higher payment on their car loan, a higher payment on their business loan. Everyone wastes money because of this group of incredibly irresponsible, fiscally irresponsible Members of the House and Senate who have brought us to this point. I can see my colleague has come to the floor, and I am sure he has stories from his State, and he has his insights on why this is an unacceptable, irresponsible place we find ourselves. All we really need--all we need is a short-term continuing resolution at this point to reopen government while we negotiate, and we should have a long-term resolution of the default issue because that is something that should never be threatened. It is Ronald Reagan who said: Do not mess with the good faith and credit of the United States of America. It is time everyone on both sides of the aisle listens to what President Reagan said, because he was right on on this, that that is just a shoot-yourself-in-the foot, self-inflicted wound that does no one in America any good at all. Let's return to the normal process of understanding there are bounds on the legislative debate. If you lose with your perspective in a legislative battle, you can come back again next time around. You can come back the next year, you can come back 2 years later, you can come back 3 months later if the votes shift. You can propose amendments. But you do not--you do not--hold the crowd hostage. You do not threaten to burn down the stadium. You do not hold the American people hostage. And you do not threaten to burn down our economy and our international standing by proposing that we not pay our bills. Thank you very much.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent to yield back all remaining time.

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. It is the same in Oregon. I don't think I have heard from a single business group that has argued in favor of the shutdown or default strategy. I know many businesses need the export license, and they need permission to take up the subcontract or the contract on the jetty or the dredging or any number of other areas. We have Crater Lake National Park. The tourist industry relies on people to come to that area. There are timber companies that need to have permission to complete their logging contract. In every single way they know, they are partnered with the government groups that enable this work to go forward, and they want those doors open. They want the government open. I ask through the Chair, what is the story in Montana?

Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate my colleague from Alaska helping to organize this conversation. I must say, I think if we got 10 commonsense people in a room, they would agree to do that short-term continuing resolution. The Democrats have agreed to a Republican number. It is a win for the Republicans. The Democrats are asking for a negotiation. That is a win for our country. We are asking for the default strategy to be set aside completely because it is completely contrary to any responsible organization to use a strategy of not paying their bills. On that foundation we should get back to the normal process of considering legislation we should be passing, such as how we restore the regular budget and appropriations process. I know that would be very welcome across this Nation. This Senate has to be able to get a budget process that isn't cut off right out of the gate, if you will, as it has been this year. It was 6 months ago that we passed a budget and we started to go to a conference committee, and a small group of colleagues filibustered starting the budget conference committee. Somehow we have to have a process where we can get into a conference room and have that conversation and not have a small group basically sabotage the entire budget appropriations process that is so important for our Nation.

Mr. MERKLEY. If I could just emphasize the point the Senator from Montana just made, there are those who say they want to engage in a default strategy because they think it will somehow do something positive in controlling our deficit and controlling our debt, but what the Senator from Montana pointed out is that when you engage in using default as a weapon, you reduce revenues, increase costs, which increases deficits and increases the debt. I think what we can summarize is not only is the default strategy severely damaging to families and businesses across the country, but it is damaging to the effort to reduce our deficits and reduce our debt.

Mr. MERKLEY. I think the children across the country know that responsible individuals pay their bills and responsible governments pay their bills. I am sure this concept is common sense in the great State of Montana.

Mr. MERKLEY. Indeed, maybe you were planning to take out a home equity loan to repair your roof or make improvements to your house. You are going to pay a higher price. This is a default tax on all of America that does nothing productive at all. This infliction of pain and agony on our businesses and our families is something that has not apparently resonated for some of my colleagues who want to threaten a default. Some of them have come to this floor and said: We think there is enough revenue coming in that we can pay our T-bills--our Treasury bills--and we can default on other obligations and therefore there won't be much damage. We had a group of experts come in and testify before the banking committee. They said: Look, envision a situation where you are applying for a mortgage and you tell the bank that you have always made your house payments, but you were not able to make some of your other payments, such as your student or car loan. The bank is going to charge you more for your house payment because there are bills you have been defaulting on. The same situation applies in America. If we pay our Treasury bills but we don't pay other obligations, that in itself will lower our credit rating and increase interest rates. A default is a default. You can choose whom you are going to default on, but no matter whom you default on, there will be a default tax on American families and American businesses with great damage to this country. That is why President Reagan simply said: Do not mess with the good faith and credit of the United States of America.

Mr. MERKLEY. There is absolutely no value, no revenue raised that can be applied to the important aspects of running a government or reducing our deficit. Indeed, this is a burden on American businesses and American families that has no benefit in any other way. In fact, the Senator mentioned the ripple effect. That ripple effect means what damages a family--I gave the example of a simple situation when an employee does not get their wages. They cannot pay their child support and they cannot pay their mortgage--and then what goes on from there. Let's take, for example, the cut in food stamps. If food stamps are not issued, then it is not just the family who is directly hurt--and I might mention our most vulnerable families--but it is also the grocery stores that are hurt. They may have to lay off additional employees, additional ripples. This is a huge infliction of a burden. If we want to think of a few examples of what happens with the default, we can think of many. Let's picture the default tax. By threatening not to pay our bills, that reduces confidence in Treasury bills, so therefore the interest rates go up on those Treasury bills. The interest rates therefore on mortgages go up and the interest on home loans go up.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague from Alaska. He is correct in pointing out that essentially right now we have a shutdown tax being imposed on families and businesses across our country. Indeed, we are facing just a few days from now a default tax. A lot of folks from across the aisle come here and say they took a pledge to block any form of tax. But this is the worst kind of tax of all.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my colleagues from Montana and Alaska to talk about some of the impacts in our various States. I thought I would share six or seven different aspects of the impact of a government shutdown and the potential of a default and then turn this over to my colleague from Montana. Then I think we are going to engage in a little bit of back-and-forth. Before I list specific examples of the challenges that are faced, I thought I would give a framework or an analogy of how to think about this. The legislative process is very much like a baseball game where various folks come together. There are some for bills, some are against a bill, they have a competition, and ultimately one side wins. Normally, the side that loses, if they believe they are still right, will say we will be back again later in the session, next year, just like a baseball team, to compete again or we will be back next year with an improved team. But in this case, after the team that supported health care won, the team that lost said we are going to appeal the ruling to the umpire and we are going to ask the umpire to rule the game out of order and rule that the losing team actually won. Then, if the umpire doesn't come to our rescue, we are going to hold the crowd hostage and we are going to threaten to burn down the stadium. Those are the types of actions that are outside the sphere of the normal legislative process--and they should be--because we have to be able to have a dialog in a democracy where we consider a bill and decide yes or no and then implement it and then come back and have an argument over improvements to that framework or whether we should throw it out completely. The American people have the opportunity to weigh in and say: Keep those folks. They did good legislation or throw the bums out. But all that is broken if, instead of completing that cycle, we have the losing team say we are going to hold the crowd hostage and threaten to burn down the stadium. Then democracy doesn't function. That is where we are right now. Holding the crowd hostage is the government shutdown, and threatening to burn down the stadium is the threat to default on the payment of bills due. So let's look at how the government shutdown is reverberating in some unexpected ways. Let's take home mortgages. A great majority of home mortgages across the Nation are insured by Fannie and Freddie. That insurance doesn't happen while Fannie and Freddie are shut down. Let's take work necessary to improve our ports, where that work is on jetties. Now that work has to stop because we can't incur a new liability to the contractor to haul the rock out and put it into place or maybe it is on a dredger that needs to take place during a window between different salmon runs in the Columbia River. But now that gets delayed and who knows when it will get done. Let's talk about a company in Oregon that exports, and they need for those exports an export license, but they can't get the export license because Commerce is shut down and can't issue that license. They have inventory that is waiting to ship out. Then they have cashflow problems not only because they can't ship the inventory, they can't get the payments for shipping. Let's talk about the trickledown for folks who are unemployed. You may think about it as an employee who is staying home. One employee wrote to me and said, think about this, think about the fact that I owe child support that is not going to get paid because I am not getting paid. Then he said, think about the housing market. I am not going to be able to pay my mortgage. What impact is that going to have on the U.S. economy? Let's take a look at the backlog of veterans' benefits. All over my State I have veterans who are applying for benefits and they want an answer, and the Veterans Department is trying to process those applications. They have a high, intense effort to catch up on that backlog. Suddenly the backlog is getting bigger instead of getting smaller because the work that was being done to get rid of that backlog grinds to a halt and therefore individual veterans are disadvantaged by not having their applications processed. Let's think about Head Start. Jessica wrote to me. I work in early headstart in Grants Pass. We are facing a shutdown due to the government shutdown. We have children who need stability and a caring place where they can get their basic needs met. So many families struggle to feed their children and sometimes the food we serve is all those children get for the day. Then she says: We provide more than just what some consider day care. We teach, we nurture, we give hope to the next generation. Shutting down our centers would mean a higher rate of poverty and dangerous homes for families and children. We need our voices to be heard. We need someone to stand up for us. There are so many different ways in addition that this shutdown is reverberating in Oregon. One that affects every rural community is the impact on timber planting. We have had the shutdown going on of actual logging that is taking place in Federal forests. Folks who are logging are being told to stop cutting new trees, to pull their logs, skid them out, if you will, haul them out and shut down. What about the planning for the cuts for next year? What about the supply of logs to the sawmills that is going to keep that sawmill operating through the winter and into the spring? The reverberations are substantial. What about the economy in those small towns that depends on those log mills when folks don't have the money, because they can't log, to buy food at the grocery store? I know the issues are not unique to Oregon. I am sure many of them reverberate in Alaska and Montana. With that, I yield the floor for my colleague from Montana.

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask through the Chair whether the Senator knows of any business group in Alaska that is arguing that the government shutdown strategy or the default strategy is good for business.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. The word's ``fiscal responsibility'' have echoed in this Chamber time after time and they have been put forward in defense of a series of strategies this year that can only be described as incredibly irresponsible. Let's turn the clock back 6 months. We tried to convene a budget conference committee with the House and it was blocked. The budget conference committee was not blocked with the argument of fiscal responsibility. Yet there was a blockade of putting together a budget so we could have a smart plan to go forward and a foundation for the appropriations bills. Then colleagues across the aisle blocked the appropriations process. They argued it was fiscally responsible to do so. But that meant keeping programs that are not working and continuing them rather than replacing them with better plans. So that, too, was irresponsible. Then we had folks argue it would be fiscally responsible if we shut down the government. But this is costing America. This is decreasing revenue. This is increasing expenses and it is increasing the deficit. Therefore, we have imposed by this group who argues in the name of fiscal responsibility that we have a tax across America, the government shutdown tax imposed on families across the land. If that was not enough, not enough to block the budget process, not enough to block the appropriations process, not enough to shut down the government, now we have a group wanting to go even further. They have their grand default strategy. They want the United States to default and they argue this will do us well fiscally. They could not be more wrong. In the Banking Committee we had a series of experts come in and we asked the question, What will happen if we default? Just simple examples were given. For example, the interest rate will go up on mortgages. A 1-percent increase on a mortgage means for a family buying a 200,000 house, about $120 more a month. That is the shutdown and the default tax that colleagues are imposing on families across America. It doesn't stop there. Everything based on interest rates goes up. Everything based on income from economic activity goes down. Expenses of safety net programs go up; in other words, the deficit goes up and the debt goes up. Let's stop this irresponsibility of blocking the budget process, blocking the appropriations process, shutting down the government, and imposing a default tax on families across this land. It is not only incredibly wrongheaded, it is doing great damage to families in every county, in every State across the United States of America. At this moment in this vote we are about to have, let's end this attack on the American families. Let's end this irresponsibility. Cloture Motion

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, through the Chair, I want to pose a question about the budget conference committee. I think it is something that has puzzled a lot of people across America. We hear some folks standing and giving speeches saying for 6 months we have been trying to get a conference committee and we have other folks who are standing and saying we will be glad to go to conference as long as there is a deal beforehand on exactly what is done in the conference committee. In that regard, I thought it would be useful to have a little bit of perspective here. My understanding is that anything that comes out of the budget conference committee would have to have agreement of both the team of delegates from the House side and the team of delegates from the Senate side. That is a question I ask of the ranking member of the Budget Committee, to clarify that process?

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, might I ask about a couple of other pieces to this puzzle. Why not, with that concern--I pass this question through the Chair to my colleague--why not, with that concern, simply ask the House delegates to carry that concern, rather than blocking the start of the conference committee?

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, the thing that puzzles me, if my colleague would still consider responding, is that there is a process on the floor of giving instructions to a conference committee. My colleague has left the floor, but the question I would have followed up with is, given that there is a specific process in the Senate for doing budget instructions to a conference committee, why not utilize that specific process, hold a vote on the conference committee instructions, rather than blockading the conference committee from starting? I guess I will have to rhetorically answer the question, that there is no good explanation for why not go through the normal process and propose a Budget Committee instruction for our conferees. Then the question becomes, couldn't we resolve this today? Couldn't we resolve this today, have a proposal put forward to instruct the conferees, vote on it on the floor of this Senate, and it either passes or it does not? Isn't the whole budget process designed specifically to be a simple majority process under the Budget Act so we can indeed get the job done and not be paralyzed? I think--I believe the story--and I would have liked to have had the perspective of my colleague--but I think the story is a determination to not allow a majority determination of the budget instructions, to, instead, allow a minority to do so. I believe also that is an absolutely unprecedented situation, but I wanted to clarify that and understand whether there was in fact precedent for this type of determination that in a simple majority budget process, a minority would blockade a budget conference. It is very strange that this should become such a central issue. But I want Americans to understand that essentially it boils down to this: For 6 months we have been trying to start a budget conference committee. A small group, a couple of individuals have wanted to instruct that Budget Committee but to do so without going through the normal process on the floor so they could do it as a minority rather than as a discussion and decision of the Senate as a whole. It is that precedent that seems unacceptable. I think if the tables were turned it would be felt strongly on the other side. I hope to keep exploring these questions, because this 6-month obstruction of being able to get the budget that provides a framework for spending is deeply damaging. This body absolutely has to be able to do its fundamental work in determining the budget, getting a budget conference, getting a budget number, doing the spending bills, all appropriations bills--because otherwise we are careening from crisis to crisis. I am going to shift gears here. I am going to step back from what is going on immediately with the shutdown and ask where did the seeds of this come from? If we turn back to about April of 2009, shortly after I first came to the Senate, there was a memo put out by an individual named Frank Luntz. Frank Luntz was providing a roadmap on how to block any sort of improvement in our health care system. Frank Luntz said, and he was specifically instructing my colleagues across the aisle--he said it doesn't matter what is in the health care bill. It doesn't matter what good it does. Whatever it is, let's attack it and call it a government takeover. This was long before anyone even knew what was going to be in the bill. So this strategy of poisonous partisanship rather than problem solving has been with us since at least April of 2009. Therefore, a series of myths were generated. As the process proceeded, those who were behind the myths kind of doubled down on them. For example, we have in the health care reform a process by which small businesses can join together and get the marketing clout of a large group to negotiate lower rates and get a better deal. But under the Frank Luntz ``let's demonize and deceive'' strategy, instead of honoring the fact that the small businesses will be able to get a better rate, there has been an assertion this would hurt small businesses. In the health care reform bill we have a process by which individuals who have no market clout can band together and get a much better deal. We are seeing significant drops in rates for individuals across this country under the marketplaces that are just now opening for signup. But indeed, under the Frank Luntz ``deceive and demonize'' strategy, it became: Let's tell people insurance rates will go up instead of down. We have a bill before us--not a bill but a health care reform law coming into effect--that ends abuses in the insurance industry. There was a situation where you could not get a policy if you had a preexisting condition; the sort of situation where if you had insurance and you got sick you would be thrown off the policy; the fact that your children were not able to stay on your policy until they were able to get health care insurance of their own. These bills of rights are reforms that are deeply sought by Americans across this country, urban and rural. But under the Frank Luntz ``deceive and demonize'' strategy, there was simply an assertion, unfounded, that this would destroy the insurance system. You have a process whereby, under the marketplaces, insurance companies will have to compete, private insurance companies. Yet under the Frank Luntz strategy adopted by some of my colleagues across the aisle, they decided to say this would hurt competition even though it strengthens competition. It puts before people, apples to apples, companies having to lay out their rates and benefits under these different levels of insurance. We are seeing that competition from private companies proceed to lower rates. Let's fast forward. We had that phase of the ``demonize the plan'' even though we have to mischaracterize it and deceive and delude Americans about what is in it.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I will wrap up with a sentence or two and yield to my colleagues. Thank you for coming to the floor to continue the conversation. I think it is so important that we proceed to put our government back on track and quit careening from crisis to crisis, doing damage to communities and families across our Nation.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask my colleague from Alabama, if he has a moment or two more, after I read an official consent request, if he might stay for a moment and answer a question about how that budget conference committee works?

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes.

Mr. MERKLEY. The Senator is right.

Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague is exactly right. They sent it to us and we voted on it.

Mr. MERKLEY. At least have that vote.