Harry Reid

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. It is in their court and has been in their court.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 Tuesday, October 1, 2013; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in day; that at that time, I be recognized; that the Senate recess from 12:30 to 2:15 tomorrow to allow for the weekly caucus meetings. I ask, before this is implemented, that everyone understand that when we receive that message from the House--I hope we will have it in the morning when we come in--I will make a motion to table it as we have done the two other measures in the last few hours.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, behind each Senator is a team of hard- working and dedicated staffers who ensure our constituents have the best possible representation in Congress. For almost 9 years, Darrel Thompson, my deputy chief of staff for intergovernmental and external affairs, has been a lynchpin of my Washington staff. Darrel grew up in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, but he fights for my constituents as if he is a native Nevadan. Darrel works with Federal and State officials and business leaders to foster economic opportunities in Nevada. And Nevada employers and workers alike have been fortunate to have Darrel watching out for their interests. Sadly for us, today is Darrel's last day with my office. Darrel has lived on Capitol Hill for two decades, and he is leaving to realize his dream of running for the District of Columbia City Council seat for Ward 6. I know Darrel's talent will shine in this new endeavor, as it has in my office. Darrel has been a trusted advisor on international labor and employment issues, labor negotiations, and job growth. He has also been an advocate for social justice, and for both the faith and African-American communities. And he has always been a strong voice for the District of Columbia in the U.S. Senate. Darrel's prior experience has been also an asset to our team. Before he joined my staff, he was chief of staff for the Barack Obama for Senate campaign and finance chief of staff for Congressman Gephardt's 2004 presidential campaign. He also received his master's in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. I am so sorry to see Darrel go, but I know my loss will be the District's gain. I congratulate him on his 9 years of dedicated service to the U.S. Senate. I wish Darrel success in his race for city council as well as a lifetime of happiness.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, following any leader remarks, the Senate will resume consideration of H.J. Res. 59, which is the continuing resolution. The time until 12:10 p.m. will be equally divided and controlled between the proponents and opponents of the motion to invoke cloture on H.J. Res. 59. The time from 12:10 p.m. until 12:30 p.m. is reserved for me and Senator McConnell. I will control the last 10 minutes; he will control the first 10 minutes of that block of time. The filing deadline for all second-degree amendments to H.J. Res. 59 is 10:30 a.m. today. At 12:30 p.m. there will be up to four rollcall votes in relation to the following, in the following order: cloture on H.J. Res. 59, motion to waive budget points of order, the Reid-Mikulski amendment--we will vote on that--and passage of the resolution, as amended, if amended. Mr. President, as I indicated, I am not going to give any remarks this morning. I want to leave as much time as possible to those who have not had an opportunity to speak or wish to speak again. I am told the Republican leader will not be here either. So I will return at approximately 12:20 p.m. I suggest the absence of a quorum and I ask unanimous consent that the time be divided equally.

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

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. During my time in Washington I have had the opportunity to work with many reasonable, thoughtful Republicans, including those serving in this body today. Those reasonable Republicans value this institution, the Senate, and they respect the government of which it is a part. Today, the Republican Party has been infected by a small but destructive faction that would rather tear down the House our Founders built than govern from it. These extremists are more interested in putting on a show, as one Republican colleague put it, than in legislating. That is why they prevented the Senate from taking action to avert a government shutdown last night to put on a show today. Despite pleas from the House of Representatives for a quick Senate action, that same vocal minority was determined to waste the dwindling hours before a government shutdown--1 day, basically, they wasted. Although every minute that passes puts this country 1 minute closer to a shutdown, a shutdown that would shatter our economy, they continue to obstruct and to delay. A bad day for government is a good day for the anarchists among us, those who believe in no--I repeat, no--government. That is their belief. Modern-day anarchists known as the tea party believe in no government. They are backed by a very wealthy group of people who finance this effort to destroy our government. It is important to note these tea party obstructionists don't represent mainstream Republicans either in this body or mainstream Republicans in our country. But unfortunately their grip on the rudder of the Republican Party is very firm. For the last few years these radicals in the House and Senate have driven America from crisis to crisis--we lurch from crisis to crisis-- leaving a trail of economic destruction behind them. Now they have taken the U.S. Government hostage and demanded an impossible ransom-- that Democrats repeal the law of this land known as ObamaCare. The Affordable Care Act has been the law of the land for 4 years. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared it constitutional and soon it will help 25 to 35 million people in America who are currently living without health insurance. It will allow them to get access to the lifesaving care they need and deserve. I don't know if people truly know what it means not to have health insurance, not to have the ability to go to the doctor or hospital when they are sick or hurting. Some of us do. Some of us understand how tens of millions of people in America can't go to the hospital when they are sick or when they are hurt. When I was a boy--I don't know how old I was, 10 or 11 years old--I was so sick. I can still remember how sick I was. I had been sick for quite a long time in the house we lived in. But, you see, we didn't have doctors in Searchlight. There wasn't a doctor for 50 miles and we had no car. I was very sick. We didn't go to doctors. But it was obvious I was very ill and so one of my older brothers came to visit and he was with a friend. That friend of my brother Don agreed to take me to the hospital. So I went to the hospital. I still have the scar. I had a growth on my large intestine. I would have died had I not gone to the hospital. So I know what it is like not to be able to go to the hospital or doctor when you are sick. My wonderful mother took in wash. Searchlight had nothing much there, but once, I remember, a TB wagon came through. That was a truck where they would do x-rays of somebody's chest to find out if they had tuberculosis because it was still around. People in Searchlight--I remember Conn Hudgens and others--had tuberculosis. My dad wouldn't go, but my mother went and had her chest x-rayed. The results came back on a little card in the mail, and she had tuberculosis. She was positive for tuberculosis. What did we do? What did she do? Nothing. Nothing. As a boy, caring about my mother, I worried so much about that. I can't imagine even to this day how she must have felt. In hindsight, it looks like it was a false positive, but that didn't take away the concern I had for a long time. So I can't imagine, I repeat, how my mother must have felt. So I have had some view of what it is like not to be able to go to the doctor or hospital when you are sick or hurt. Again, I don't know how old I was, but my little brother, 22 months younger than I am, was coming up on a bicycle and he slid and he was hurt. He was crying. I guess he was 10 years old or something like that, and no one was home. So I helped him get up to the house and lie down. I went and found my mother. My brother never, ever went to the doctor, and he had a broken leg. He still has a bent leg to show today. He laid on that bed. He couldn't touch the bed it hurt so much. He laid there until he could get up and walk a week or 10 days later. So these people who just nonchalantly don't focus on the fact that millions of Americans have no health insurance--we can't just walk away from this. The health care law we have is important. Republicans fought long and hard in opposition to ObamaCare, and they lost. It was a fair fight. They made their case against Obama directly to the American people in November last year, and they lost again. Obama won not by a small margin. He won by 5 million votes. What was the main issue in that campaign? It was health care. The American people overwhelmingly reelected the President, and one reason they did is because of health care. Yesterday, on this floor, from over there, a colleague of ours, the senior Senator from Arizona, John McCain, spoke with great eloquence about this law, a law he opposes. This is what he said: The people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke and reelected the President of the United States. That doesn't mean we give up our efforts to try to replace and repair ObamaCare. But elections have consequences. The majority of the American people supported the President of the United States and renewed his stewardship of this country. I don't like it. But I think all of us should respect the outcome of elections, which reflect the will of the people. Who said this again? Who said this? Who is this John McCain? He is a proven fighter, in war and in public service. This is a man who held the mantle of the Republican Party's nomination to be President of the United States. He is not some gadfly but an American patriot, and history books will talk about that in generations to come. The Republicans heard his message, for which the Senate and the country should be grateful. So there is challenge this fall, closing in on the end of the fiscal year, for those of us who respect the system of government devised by America's Founders, those of us who believe in the rule of law and that elections reflect the will of the American people will face a test. Can we prevent an economically disastrous government shutdown, and can we protect the full faith and credit of the United States? From one newspaper--not lots of newspapers, one newspaper--look at the headlines ``GOP hard-liners block strategy to avoid shutdown''; ``Government shutdown would entail cost''; ``Shutdown could carry pay risk even for employees kept on the job.'' One newspaper. ``Agencies prepare to furlough workers in the face of partial government shutdown.'' ``Shutdown grows more likely as House digs in.'' This is from Governor Christy: ``Shutdown would be a failure.'' He says it would be irresponsible. ``As government shutdown looms, Americans brace for possible disruption, disappointment.'' Another headline: ``Surrounding jurisdictions develop shutdown game plans.'' ``Threat of shutdown delays some Colorado flood relief.'' Is it any wonder the stock market is going down? Is it any wonder that people are concerned? Is it any wonder that someone such as the woman who works for the Park Service, who came to see me yesterday, said to me: I have been through this before. I am not going to get paid for my work. So the question is, Can we overcome modern-day anarchists? In just a few minutes the Senate will take the first step toward wresting control from these extremists. Democrats will vote to avert a government shutdown, and I am confident many of my Republican colleagues will vote with us to allow the government to perform its basic duties. Together, we will send a message to radical Republicans that we will not allow the law of the land to be used as a hostage, a law that has been in place for 4 years. I am pleased so many of my Senate Republican colleagues seem to understand the stakes of this debate--the economic health of a still struggling Nation and the economic well-being of still struggling families. I urge sensible Republicans in the House of Representatives to follow our lead, to follow the lead of Republicans in the Senate, and let the House Democrats vote. Don't just make it a majority- minority; let the 435 Members who serve in the House of Representatives vote and pass a clean bill to avert a shutdown. Defy the anarchists. Respect the rule of the law and help the Senate govern. I ask unanimous consent that the time remaining for Senator McConnell and myself be yielded back and that we begin the vote.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive all applicable sections of the Act and any other applicable budget points of order for purposes of the pending joint resolution and the amendments. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. REID. I yield back all time on the motion to waive.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, with the concurrence of the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 204 and 205; that there be 30 minutes for debate, equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 214 and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, I wish to thank all my Republican colleagues and, of course, Democratic colleagues who acted responsibly today to prevent a government shutdown. House Republicans should follow the example set by Republicans in the Senate. I want everyone to listen and to hear. The Senate has acted. This is the only legislation that can avert a government shutdown and that time is ticking as we speak. The Senate will be back in session on Monday. In the meantime, if Speaker Boehner wants to avoid a government shutdown, he will pass our resolution; otherwise, it is a government shutdown. The President just spoke on national TV outlining how bad that would be. We have said it on the floor, but it doesn't have the power of the President telling everyone how bad it will be, and it will be very, very negative for our economy and for the American people in general. House Republicans should think long and hard about what is at stake and who would be hurt by a government shutdown. Each of us, all 535 Members of Congress, were elected by the American people to serve them, and the American people deserve better than a government that lurches from crisis to crisis caused by a handful of people. American families deserve a government that works for them, not against them.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. on Monday, September 30, 2013, and that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and that the majority leader be recognized at 5 p.m.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, Senators will be notified when the next votes are scheduled.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that from Friday, September 27, through Monday, September 30, the majority leader and Senator Boxer be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or joint resolutions.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, following my remarks and those of the Republican leader, the Senate will resume consideration of the continuing resolution. At 10:30 this morning, after Senator McConnell and I finish our remarks, the majority and the Republicans will control alternating 1-hour blocks of time, with the majority controlling the first hour. I filed cloture last evening on the continuing resolution. As a result, the filing deadline for all first-degree amendments to the resolution is 1 p.m. today. Absent consent, the cloture vote will occur 1 hour after the Senate convenes tomorrow, Friday. Mr. President, as I said yesterday--I tell everyone here again today--we know what the end is like. We can finish this sometime Saturday, but it would seem to me that we should do everything we can to get this back to the House as quickly as we can. So it would be my suggestion that--we have the ability to wrap this up today. I would suggest that would be the best thing to do, but it is up to my Republican colleagues as to whether they will let that happen.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday I warned of the economic consequences if a few extremist Republicans force a government shutdown. Already, the stock market has slipped, and that is an understatement. Five days in a row--the longest continuous period since 2012--the stock market has gone down, and they all say it is the result of the fear of the government shutting down. And why should the financial markets feel any differently? People are still speaking about closing the government. Now, the talk by a few Republicans over here has stopped the last 24 hours, but they over there are taking up where the long talk over here ended: Close the government. The tea party is still insisting on a shutdown. It is hard to comprehend, but it is true. The dark consequences do not end just by saying that. If the Federal Government closes its doors, seniors applying for Social Security will not be able to apply. Veterans applying for disability will not be able to apply. They would be forced to wait until the Federal workers return to their posts. The FBI, because of sequestration and other anomalies we have around here, is talking about furloughing their employees, closing their offices 1 day a week. Across the country, mortgage loans and small business loans would be delayed. Members of the military will be forced to defend this country without even a paycheck as thanks. Billions of dollars will drain from the economy every day the government is closed for business. This is not hyperbole, not conjecture. It is the truth. If you look back at history, it pretty well determines where you are on a given day, and if you look back to when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans controlled Congress--the House of Representatives--they shut down the government in 1995 because President Clinton would not meet their every demand, and it cost the country tens of billions of dollars. So yesterday I urged Republicans to consider the impact of a shutdown on the recovery. But the economic price of shutting down the government should not be the only thing keeping the Republicans up at night; they should worry about the political consequence as well. Mr. President, we are all politicians, all 100 of us. A brandnew poll--CBS, a respected organization--says 80 percent of Americans--that is almost as much as favor background checks on guns--80 percent of Americans--you rarely get 80 percent of Americans to agree on anything, but they agree that those who want the government to be held hostage to extract these concessions are people they will not vote for. Seventy- five percent of Republicans feel that way in this poll. So those of us who remember the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996 know the story did not end well for Republicans. Just ask Charles Krauthammer. There is no more respected conservative--really conservative--columnist than Charles Krauthammer. He has penned a conservative column for the Washington Post since the 1980s. Here is what he wrote just a week or two ago: Every fiscal showdown has redounded against the Republicans. The first, in 1995, effectively marked the end of the Gingrich revolution. That is a direct quote. As they did in the 1990s, today's radical Republicans have called for concessions they know we will never agree to. Senate Democrats will not agree and the President will not agree. The Senate will never pass, nor will President Obama sign, a bill that guts the Affordable Care Act and denies millions of Americans access to lifesaving health care. The statement made by John McCain yesterday said it all. He has some credentials to talk about that. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States. He did not like what happened with health care, and he talked about it here. He wished it had not passed, but it passed. He said it was a fair fight and he and the Republicans lost. Move on to something else is what he said. The Senate will never pass, as I have indicated before, a bill that guts the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare. Tea party Republicans have demanded the impossible and vowed to shut down the government unless they get it. Mr. Krauthammer and I do not agree all the time, but he aptly measured the fallout from the shutdowns of the mid-1990s and correctly predicted a similar result from a modern shutdown--a modern shutdown. He wrote what nearly two dozen mainstream Republican Senators have also said: ``This gambit is doomed to fail.'' He also wrote: This is about tactics. If I thought this would work, I would support it. But I don't fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal. That is an understatement. I commend Republican Senators who have spoken in favor of reason, and you cannot imagine how satisfied I am because that is how we used to get things done here. I can look back at John Breaux from Louisiana. If he thought we were not doing enough on this side of the aisle, he reached out to Republicans and worked something out. So what Republican Senators have said in the last few days is really important. They have spoken out for reason, calling the tea party's shutdown ultimatum a ``box canyon,'' a ``suicide note,'' and ``the dumbest idea ever.'' Although these reasonable Republicans dislike ObamaCare as much as their more radical colleagues, they also realize the futility and the danger of political hostage-taking. They know this country cannot be governed by one faction of one party on one side of the Capitol. Governing must be a cooperative effort that sets aside ideological or parochial concerns in favor of what is best for the Nation, for the economy, and for middle-class families. On November 14, 1995--the first day of the first government shutdown--President Clinton urged Republicans in Congress to govern with him instead of fighting against him. This is what he said: There is, after all, a simple solution to the problem. All Congress has to do is to pass a straightforward bill to let government perform its duties and pay its debts. Then we can get back to work and resolve our differences . . . in an open, honest, and straightforward manner. Mr. President, every Thursday when we are in session, I do a ``Welcome to Washington.'' A lady from Boulder City, NV, came up to me. She said: I work for the Park Service, and we are so afraid. At the Park Service, we don't know what we are going to do. The last time there was a government shutdown, the parks closed. There is so much confusion. That is the way it is throughout government. So I offer today the same advice that President Clinton gave in 1995. Let government perform its duties. The way out of this predicament is as simple today as it was in 1995. So again I invite my Republican colleagues to return with me to the time when we worked to resolve our differences in an open, honest, and straightforward manner. Mr. President, I am going to take a few minutes. I apologize to my Republican counterpart, but we have to understand, the American people have to understand the seriousness of what is going on around here. Tom Friedman wrote yesterday in his op-ed piece--he is a renowned syndicated columnist. He has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He has had six or seven best-selling books. I am not going to read everything he wrote, but I want to read a little bit that he wrote yesterday. The Republican Party is being taken over by a Tea Party faction that is not interested in governing on any of the big issues--immigration, gun control, health care, debt and taxes--where, with just minimal compromises between the two parties, we'd amplify our strengths so much that we'd separate ourselves from the rest of the world. Instead, this group is threatening to shut down the government and undermine America's vital credit rating if it doesn't get its way. This kind of madness helped to produce the idiotic sequester--the $1.2 trillion in automatic, arbitrary and across-the-board budget cuts from 2013 to 2021--that is already undermining one of our strongest assets. And here he goes: Ask Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of American biotech innovation. In fiscal 2013, the sequester required the N.I.H. to cut $1.55 billion across the board: 5 percent at each of its 27 institutes and centers, irrespective of whether one was on the cusp of a medical breakthrough and another was not. ``There was still an ability within each institute to make adjustments, but, as N.I.H. director, I could not decide to emphasize cancer research and down modulate something else,'' Collins explained. Because of the sequester and the fact that the N.I.H. budget has been losing ground to inflation for 10 years, ``we will not be able to fund 640 research grants that were scored in the top 17 percent of the proposals we received,'' said Collins. He goes on to say: ``They would have been funded without the sequester, but now they won't. They include new ideas on cancer, diabetes, autism and heart disease--all the things that we as a country say are a high priority. I can't say which of those grants would have led to the next breakthrough, or which investigator would be a Nobel Prize winner 20 years from now.'' Of those 640 top research proposals, 150 were from scientists financed in a previous budget cycle who had returned to the N.I.H. to secure another three to five years of funding--because they thought they were really on to something and a peer review board agreed. ``Now we are cutting them off,'' said Collins, ``so you damage the previous investment as well as the future one.'' In 2014, the N.I.H. was planning to offer new money to stimulate research proposals in a dozen areas including how to speed up the use of stem cells to cure Parkinson's and other diseases, how to better manage pain in sickle-cell disease, and how to improve early diagnosis of autism. All were shelved because of the sequester, said Collins: Why ask people to submit applications we would just have to turn down. In addition, in 2013, the N.I.H. had to turn away from its research hospital 750 patients who wanted to be part of a clinical trial for disorders for which medicine currently has no answers. America's biomedical ecosystem depends heavily on N.I.H. doing basic research the private sector won't do. So we're cutting the medical research that has the potential to prevent and cure the very diseases that are driving health care costs upward. In short, we're cutting without a plan--the worst thing a country or company can do--and we're doing it because one of our two parties has been taken over by angry radicals and barking fools and the old leadership is running scared. But when the Republican Party goes this far off the rail, it isn't even remotely challenging President Obama to challenge his base on taxes and entitlements. And thus does a great country, with so much potential, slowly become ungreat. Not only do we have sequestration, now they want to do even more and shut the government down and not extend the debt ceiling. This is a say bad time for America. I hope people come to their senses.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, I am reminded, when I hear the distinguished President pro tempore of the Senate talk, why the people of Vermont so love him. Here is a man who has set all kinds of records in Vermont: the first Democrat elected, and on and on, with all the many accolades that he has. I have always admired and appreciated him. Each day that goes by, I understand better than I did the last why the people of Vermont revere this good man.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask the Chair to lay before the Senate a message from the House with respect to H.R. 527. The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives: Resolved, That the House agreed to the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H.R. 527) entitled ``An Act to amend the Helium Act to complete the privatization of the Federal helium reserve in a competitive market fashion that ensures stability in the helium markets while protecting the interests of American taxpayers, and for other purposes,'' with an amendment.

Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent the Senate concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment; and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. REID. This is a very important piece of legislation. I wish we could do a lot more like this. This is the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013. It is something we have had in effect since World War II. It is so very, very important. Today around America 750,000 people will have MRIs conducted to find out how sick they are or if they are hurt or sick. Without this bill passing, the big magnets they have in these machines, which are cooled only by one thing--helium--and the people who depend on this, the high- tech industry would have to go out on the spot market and buy this stuff, which would increase the price of health care delivery, and the making computer chips and lots of other things. It is a shame it was held up for such a long time for no good reason. Now we have passed it, and I am very happy that everybody allowed this to happen.

Mr. REID

Mr. REID. Madam President, I am trying to move this along as quickly as possible. I am going to come here a little later and ask consent that we move forward very quickly. Each day that we don't complete the CR is a day closer to the government shutting down. I want no excuses from anyone about time. I don't want anyone to say that the majority controls the Senate and that we are doing anything to slow down this bill. I think we should move as quickly as we can. It is to everyone's advantage. If the House wants to take a look at what we have done, let them do that and get back to us as quickly as possible. We have to avoid this shutdown. The American people are afraid of what could happen.