David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard), an outstanding member of our Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to how much time remains on each side?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member of the full authorizing Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Have we had enough yet? The American people are fed up with partisan games and procedural gimmicks. They see right through them, and they are demanding that we come together and get the government back to work today. If the Speaker of the House is so sure that the votes for a clean funding bill are not there, he should call the vote to prove it to the American people. But he won't do that, because everyone in this Chamber knows that the Senate-passed continuing resolution would clear this House in a heartbeat and end this Tea Party-fueled dream of government collapse. Today, the majority has decided that the government function they want to give political cover to is border security. Border security, obviously, was not very high on their list. We have had to wait 10 days before they have gotten around to it. Of course, the question remains: Why didn't they think more about border security or cancer research or the national parks or women's and children's nutrition when they were shutting the government down in the first place last Monday? Ten days late and billions of dollars short, you might say. As someone who has worked for years in a bipartisan spirit to secure our Nation's border, I certainly appreciate that border security is one of the most sensitive and dangerous areas of the budget with which to play partisan political games. But I have to ask: What about the many other critical homeland security functions that this bill wouldn't do anything to fix, including protecting our Nation from cyber attacks, for example, or keeping our aviation and mass transit systems safe or funding the Secret Service or developing the next generation of explosive detection technology? We cannot continue to pick winners and losers by providing temporary funding for government services, operations and personnel. This piecemeal approach to governing is failing our constituents and is failing our economy. The only solution is to reopen the entire Federal Government by calling up the clean funding bill passed by the Senate. Mr. Speaker, last week, we were told by Republican leaders not to worry. Furloughed employees should stand by, they said, while the House votes to open the government one news cycle at a time. Americans' livelihoods can't wait for another news cycle. We are tired of waiting. We are tired of this charade. Let's dispense with this political theater. Let's get back to our basic job description: to keep the government open, to pay the country's bills, and to negotiate a comprehensive budget plan that lifts sequestration, revives our economy, and secures our fiscal future. The first step is a clean continuing resolution. Let's do that today. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the ranking member of the Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee of the Homeland Security authorizing committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, this debate is a bizarre experience for those of us who have been urging negotiation on the budget for a year. ``Take the President up on his overture of last December,'' we've said to our Republican friends. ``Let's go to a conference with the Senate and work out a budget.'' But the Republicans have steadfastly refused. They have run out the clock. And why did they do that? So that in a crisis atmosphere, they could demand a ransom for doing our basic duty--keeping the government open and paying our bills. Well, that's extortion, and it's way over the line. We can't do that. In fact, we need to open the government. We could do it tonight. The votes are here if the Speaker would simply permit a vote. We could reopen the government immediately. I promise you once we do our basic duty, we will be happy immediately to do what we should have been doing all along, and that is to negotiate a budget plan, a budget plan that puts everything on the table: revenues, entitlement, all categories of spending, a budget plan that secures this country's economic future and ends this charade that the Republicans have put us through here as the new fiscal year begins.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I had the honor of attending the annual awards dinner of the Partnership for Public Service, the so-called Sammies Award. These are awards that are given each year to outstanding public servants. Last night's awardees had touching, inspiring stories of the work they had done within the Centers for Disease Control in polio eradication, the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children--an agency we know very well in Homeland Security. The Central Intelligence Agency, story after story of devoted public service--public service, I must say, that has taken place in recent years in an atmosphere where public service is often denigrated and public servants often have their pay frozen by virtue of the budget nonsense of the sort we are witnessing here this week. Half of those awardees last night were on furlough. What a disgrace. What a commentary on the honor that we should be paying to those who serve our country so well. So we're asking today, it would take about 30 minutes; there would be a bipartisan majority easily in this body for ending this shutdown and opening the Federal Government. And on the issues before us--the budget, health care, whatever--you know, you live to fight another day. But we have no business in this body demanding a ransom for doing our basic job, which is to keep the lights on, keep the government running, and to pay our country's bills. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Barber) for a unanimous consent request.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu) for a unanimous consent request.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire, does the gentleman have additional speakers?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, how much time does each side have remaining?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), another appropriations colleague, the ranking member of the Interior Subcommittee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), a fellow Appropriations member.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the ranking member of the Border and Maritime Subcommittee of Homeland Security.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, how much longer are we going to continue this charade? At what expense are we going to continue this charade? The Federal employees who serve our country are being disserved, as well as the American people who depend on their services. How much longer are we going to continue this same tired old dishonest debate? Today it's about FEMA. We appreciate the Republicans' concern for FEMA. Like them, we are also anxiously watching the approach of Hurricane Karen. It's too bad that our Republican friends didn't think a little bit more about such things on Monday midnight when they shut the government down. The issue, of course, is not whether we want to provide funding for FEMA or for any other particular activity or particular group of Federal employees. I'll take a back seat to no one when it comes to supporting the men and women who serve on the front lines of our national disaster preparedness and response efforts. And we know they will be there, whatever Hurricane Karen amounts to. The issue here is whether we are going to pick winners and losers by providing temporary funding for governmental services, operations, and personnel when everyone in this body knows that we could reopen the entire Federal Government in one fell swoop this afternoon by calling up the Senate-passed continuing resolution. That's what Democrats and a growing number of Republicans are advocating, and it's the only path that will get us out of this mess. Instead, the House majority continues to bring to the floor piecemeal measures like this one, measures that may be red meat for Ted Cruz, but they have no chance of passing the Senate or being signed by the President because they don't solve the basic problem. Therefore, they are a cynical and cruel deception. We all know that. So let's quit playing games, and let's actually do our job for the American people. Mr. Speaker, if we're going to resume funding for parts of the Department of Homeland Security, I'd like to ask, where's the bill that's going to fund the Secret Service, whose importance was on full display yesterday? Where's the bill to ensure our aviation system remains safe and secure through TSA? Where's the bill to keep us safe from cyber attacks? Of course we all want to provide funding for FEMA, but what about all the other employees of the Department of Homeland Security who work every day to ensure the security of our Nation? What about the Border Patrol agents, Customs and Border Protection officers, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents? They're all protecting our Nation, and they're protecting it without pay at this moment. Well, maybe the House majority will eventually get to them or, then again, maybe they won't. It's becoming more and more difficult to tell whom the Republican majority cares about at any given moment. Now, there have been charges of a lack of willingness to negotiate and compromise on the part of the President and congressional Democrats. Let's be clear: the only ones who have compromised on anything related to funding the government are Democrats. We have compromised to the tune of $60 billion, that is, agreeing to a short-term continuing resolution well below the President's budget request, well below the Senate-passed budget resolution. And by the way, that's the same budget resolution that Republicans have refused to work on with the Senate and that would have headed off this shutdown in the first place. It really must take some nerve for our colleagues now, all of a sudden, to be singing the praises of conference committees! But as to the Senate's clean bipartisan funding bill, we don't need a conference committee. We don't need to talk. We need a vote. The clean continuing resolution would pass this House easily, right this minute, if the Republican leadership would simply put it up for a bipartisan vote. So let's dispense with this political theater. Let's get back to our basic job description which, surely, by any measure, involves keeping the government open. It also involves paying the country's bills, and it must involve a comprehensive budget plan that lifts sequestration, revives our economy, and reduces our deficit. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My friend from Kentucky, the chairman of the full committee is, in a time-honored House tradition, criticizing the other body. I've done some of that myself. But let's be clear about a couple of things. Our Republican friends, as I recall, for years were badgering the Senate to pass a budget resolution. This year they did it. They did it and were ready to go to conference months ago; they were ready to go to conference with a budget resolution that was comprehensive in dealing with the deficit. And had that been agreed upon between the two Houses, it could have prevented this whole mess. From all indications, it is the House Republicans, the leadership of this body, that has refused to go to conference. I don't really think that's in dispute. Secondly, my friend from Kentucky, and many speakers in the last few days, have talked about all those appropriations bills and how they didn't make it to the floor of the Senate. What they didn't tell you was why they didn't make it to the floor of the Senate. Again, I don't think this is open to dispute. The Transportation-HUD appropriations bill was ready for floor action on the Senate side. It was a threatened Republican filibuster that kept it off the floor and that has kept all subsequent bills off the floor. I assure you, the Senate leadership and Senator Mikulski, the appropriations chairman in the Senate, were more than ready to take those appropriations bills to the floor. In many cases, they had been written with good bipartisan cooperation. But it is the Republican leadership who dictated that the Senate would not pass those appropriations bills. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), my friend, the ranking member of our full committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), ranking member of the Homeland Security authorizing committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I have the privilege of representing one of the most military-friendly and veteran-friendly areas of the country, North Carolina. So I'm glad our Republican colleagues are concerned with maintaining funding for our Nation's veterans. But it's too bad they didn't think a little more about the VA before forcing this government shutdown on us Monday night. And now it's too bad they're not showing equal concern for the more than half a million veterans who now serve their country as Federal employees, many of whom have been sent home on furlough and now have bills piling up, or the veteran small business owners whose SBA loans are on hold, or the veteran parents whose kids have been turned away from Head Start, or the veterans earning their graduate degrees whose research labs have been closed. Madam Speaker, of course we need to restore full funding for the VA so it can resume its full array of services to our Nation's veterans, to whom we owe a special debt of gratitude and support. But veterans want the same thing all Americans want: for us to reopen the entire government so they can get on with their lives as parents and workers and members of their communities. You don't have to take my word for it. In a letter sent this morning to the bipartisan congressional leadership, the heads of several major Veterans Service Organizations write, and I quote: Our organizations and the veterans we represent will no longer tolerate Congress leveraging veterans' health and well-being to achieve unrelated political ends. Or, in the succinct words of the spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, ``The VA needs to be fully funded, not piecemealed and not used as leverage.'' So let's dispense with this political theater and this piecemeal approach that fails to end the shutdown. The Senate has approved a clean funding bill that will pass this House easily this very afternoon if the Speaker will simply let it be voted on. It's time to get on with this business that the American people elected us to do.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House now consider the Senate-passed clean continuing resolution so that the Department of Homeland Security can pay the frontline personnel that put their lives on the line every day and secure our country's critical infrastructure.