Paul Sarbanes

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. We reached agreement with the President, and the Government continued to function on the basis of the continuing resolution. Now you have an instance in which you have just brought the Government to a partial shutdown by not providing a continuing resolution and not working out the differences that were connected with the veto of the appropriations bills. The Senator mentioned the Bureau of the Census, and he sort of dismissed it. The United States has done a decennial census every year since 1790. That was when the first census was done. We have done a census every 10 years since then. Does the Senator think that we should do a decennial census in the year 2000?

Mr. SARBANES. I say to the Senator that the President had other reasons as well. But since you focused on the Bureau of Census, unless the Census Bureau gets additional funds now to begin the work that needs to be done to do the decennial census in the year 2000, they will not be able to do it.

Mr. SARBANES. Can I ask what the time situation is?

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to make this observation about the comments of the Senator from Mississippi. Never before has the Congress used as a coercive tactic to close down the Government in order to try to gain its way for a fundamental change----

Mr. SARBANES. The President could have called the Congress back. The Congress gave him a CR so the Government could continue to function. Now what is happening is, for the first time ever, the Congress is refusing to provide a CR and use that as a coercive tactic in the bargaining. That is an irresponsible and, in my view, impermissible action. That is what is happening. We did not close the Government down with respect to the Republican Presidents. We let the Government go on to function.

Mr. SARBANES. The Government has been closed down for 19 days.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, reclaiming my time, I want to answer that point. There were periods before the Civiletti decision in 1980 in which the Government continued to function without an appropriations bill because there was not a ruling that under the Antideficiency Act, the Government could not go on functioning. So we did not have an appropriations bill, but the Government continued to function. Then we had this ruling that you are not allowed to do that. Subsequent to that, we had maybe a day, or a weekend, or something, in which there would be a gap in between having an appropriation bill, and either getting an appropriation or getting a continuing resolution. This is the first time, clearly, in which an extended period has been allowed to develop as a coercive tactic in closing down the Government. You cannot find a previous instance--you can find instances before the Civiletti opinion in which departments continued to function without an appropriations bill, but there was then a ruling that said such functioning ran counter to the Antideficiency Act. You can then find instances after the Civiletti opinion in which you had a period of a day or two or a weekend in which that was the case. But we never had an instance, as we have now experienced, where we have had 6 days earlier in 1995 and now we have run for 19 days and where it is clearly admitted that this is being used as a coercive tactic. My distinguished colleagues in the House have been very explicit about the fact that they will, as they say, create a ``titanic legislative standoff'' with President Clinton. Others have said openly that they intended to bring the Government to a halt, to have a closedown, in order to provoke a controversy. My very basic point is that this is irresponsible. It has not been done in the past. It represents, I think, an abuse of the constitutional arrangements of power, and it ought to cease. I yield the floor.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, one article talking about the impact across the Nation of the partial Government shutdown. Let me quote from it: Kansas stopped paying unemployment benefits yesterday, the first time a State has turned away claims in the federal program's 60-year history. The Environmental Protection Agency sent home 2,400 of its ``Superfund'' workers and stopped toxic waste cleanup work at 609 sites across the Nation throwing hundreds of contract employees out of work . . . With the holiday season over, the impact of the partial Government shutdown came into sharper focus as private sector companies and State agencies struggled with the ripple effects from Washington . . . ``We've never been through anything like this before,'' said Ronald Frank, Executive Vice President of Ecology and Environment, a Superfund contractor based near Buffalo that will furlough ``a couple hundred'' workers today. ``I don't think this is the way the system ought to work.'' He is absolutely right, it is not the way the system ought to work. Another private sector operator, ``Michael Tilchin, Director of Superfund programs at CH2M Hill Ltd, said `hundreds of employees' would be furloughed.'' His company is helping clean up an old manufacturing plant in Hellertown, PA, where hazardous wastes have contaminated the groundwater. The job is 95 percent complete and may have an ``unintended consequence,'' Tilchin said. ``In the event the shutdown persists, the costs of shutting it down and restarting it may be larger than the cost of completing the work.'' And another private sector businessman said: ``If they had their own business, would they run that business this way?'' he asked, referring to Congress. For the Government to have no plan to ensure that its programs will continue operating, he said, ``seems kind of ridiculous.'' It is ridiculous, and it is stupid and it is irrational, and it lacks any common sense. It just shows the limits to which some are prepared to go in terms of using coercive tactics in order to gain their way on another issue. That is what is at work here. Are you entitled to use any and all tactics, no matter how disruptive, no matter how much chaos they create, no matter how much injury they do, no matter how much harm they inflict on people in order to gain your way? That is not my understanding of how democracy works, and that is not my understanding of how our constitutional system is supposed to work. Every time there is a sharp disagreement, is the Government to be taken hostage as a coercive tactic? In fact, we have a national policy of not negotiating with hostage-takers. That is the position the United States takes when it is confronted with this situation in the international arena. The ripple effect that is being felt throughout the economy is extraordinary. ``Hundreds of companies whose Federal contracts were frozen when the furlough began * * * have either sent employees home or may have to do so soon.'' These are not Federal employees. These are private sector employees. The Federal employees, many of them, are coming into work, over 500,000, and not being paid. And I ask people to stop and think: How long could they go without a paycheck? Now, there is apparently a certain insensitivity in the Congress to that, but it may just reflect the fact that many Members of the Congress have significant economic means and the loss of a paycheck would not impact upon them the way it does on ordinary citizens who cannot go without a paycheck. They have mortgage payments to make; they have car payments to make; they have school payments to make. Beyond the Federal employees are all of the private sector employees who are being impacted very sharply, and those employees, unlike furloughed Federal workers who expect to be reimbursed eventually for time off the job, most employees of Federal contractors and vendors will not be paid retroactively. Mr. President, the impact of this is reaching not only locally and nationally, it is also reaching internationally. Visa applications by foreigners to come to this country have come to a complete halt. There are 20,000 to 30,000 applications made a day. Many of these people want to come for business purposes, for tourism, which is, of course, important to the functioning of our economy. We have just cut that off. These visas are backed up. Americans are backed up now waiting for passports. In many instances, people have forfeited payments for travel arrangements. With the action taken by the Senate yesterday we have the opportunity to correct this situation. There is a clean resolution that has gone to the House. I very much hope the House will pass it; that this exercise in hostage-taking will come to a halt and the talks on the overall 7- year plan can continue with their sharp differences, but this irresponsible tactic, this impermissible tactic of coercion by closing the Government down ought to come to a halt. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Jan. 3, 1996] Inconvenience Edges Toward Emergency (By Thomas W. Lippman) In Vietnam, the government has threatened to cut off electricity to the U.S. Embassy because the $1,600 bill hasn't been paid. In Russia, U.S. diplomats took out an interest-free loan from the Moscow embassy's community association to cover the payroll for Russian employees. In Cuba, the trucker who hauls drinking water to the U.S. interests section has refused to make any more deliveries until paid. Between 20,000 and 30,000 applications by foreigners for visas to come to this country are going unprocessed each day, creating a huge backlog of paperwork and infuriating prospective visitors. And in this country, more than 200,000 Americans are waiting for passports that cannot be issued. Such is life in the State Department in the third week of a partial government shutdown that has cut off the department's money and blocked almost all nonemergency spending. Senior officials yesterday described a mounting sense of crisis as undone paperwork piles up, the backlog of unprocessed visa and passport applications grows, travel plans are canceled and embassy officials scramble for funds to pay restive local employees. ``We just don't have any cash,'' said Richard M. Moose, undersecretary of state for management. As long as suppliers and contractors are willing to extend credit for the few expenditures authorized, the State Department can get by, Moose said. But in the many parts of the world where the department has to lay out cash as services are provided-- including several countries where security companies demand payment up front to provide guards--the current mass inconvenience is about to become an emergency, Moose and other officials said. People around the world may find it hard to believe that the United States could be reduced to the level of ``banana republic,'' Moose said, but ``my threshold of believing what can't happen is getting lower all the time.'' State is one of nine Cabinet departments and assorted independent agencies whose fiscal 1996 appropriations bills have not been signed into law by President Clinton and thus are mostly shut down because of the budget impasse between Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress. State, more than any other agency, has spread the impact of the shutdown around the world. Among those who have felt it are students who planned to start classes this month in foreign universities, vacationers who had firm travel plans and nonrefundable tickets, and people with job offers from employers overseas. ``We had an 84-year-old woman who wanted a passport to go to Rome because her bishop was being elevated to cardinal'' in the Roman Catholic church, a State Department consular official said. ``We had to say no because it wasn't an emergency.'' In many foreign countries, according to Moose and other officials, local laws do not permit the furloughing of local employees. As a result, ``we have to let them come to work, but we can't pay them.'' Worse than that, other officials said, is the fact that visa applicants can see all these furlough-proof local employees at their desks, but are unable to obtain any service because the workers are not permitted to do anything. ``All this is unprecedented. We hope for a solution soon. Otherwise things will just get worse and worse,'' said Pamela Harriman, U.S. ambassador to France. State Department and Office of Management and Budget officials said the cutoff of visas and passports has cut into airline revenue at a peak travel season because tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of prospective travelers had to stay home. Airline industry spokesmen, however, said they have so far noticed little impact. Some of the impact of the shutdown is more embarrassing than substantive. Harriman and all other ambassadors, for example, have been told they cannot spend money on what is known as ``representation,'' which mostly means entertainment. No luncheons for visiting business executives, no cocktail parties for important locals, no travel to ribbon-cutting and statue dedications. The shutdown also is undermining morale in the ranks as leaves and long-planned transfers are canceled and work that is being done goes unrewarded, senior officials said. In Colombia, for example, U.S. consular officials who worked all last week to help families of the victims of an American Airlines crash were treated as ``volunteers'' because there is no money to pay them. In Washington, newly appointed foreign service officers are planning to meet tonight to commiserate over cancellation of their first deployments. And morale among State Department and U.S. Information Agency employees at overseas posts is likely to fall further on the next scheduled payday, officials said, because their colleagues from funded agencies, such as Defense and Agriculture, get full paychecks but they do not. Those concerns, however, pale before impending crises in security and communications, officials said. ``I don't think the system can tolerate this for many more days,'' said OMB Deputy Director John Koskinen, noting that local personnel in many foreign countries ``live paycheck to paycheck. That raises a serious problem for us because a number of those people provide security.'' ``The places that really worry us are the ones where the FSNs [foreign service nationals, or local employees] are at the lower end of the pay scale anyway,'' Moose said, citing Cairo, New Delhi and Moscow as examples. He said in many embassies funds used for recreation or commissaries are being tapped to cover the payroll shortfall. In embassies that have U.S. Marine guards, Moose said, the State Department is responsible for paying for the Marines' food but no longer has the funds to do so. ``Maybe we can get the Corps to carry us on the cuff. It doesn't do a lot for our image,'' he said. As if to underline his point about image, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, where the shutdown has been front-page news, sought to allay fears about the solvency of the government in Washington. ``The embassy wishes to make it clear that this situation arises from the constitutional definitions of how the United States budget is passed into law and does not represent any fundamental inability of the United States of America to pay its bills,'' the statement said. On Saturday, Moose said, the State Department will run out of money to pay the contractors who run its worldwide communications network. Diplomatic cables, e-mail and secure telephones--the lifeblood of diplomatic communication--could be truncated or cut off, he said. The restriction on all but emergency travel will not block Secretary of State Warren Christopher and a sizable entourage from flying this weekend to Paris and the Middle East, officials said. One reason is that Christopher travels on an Air Force plane, and the State Department's credit is good with the Air Force. [From the Washington Post, Jan. 3. 1996]

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, we have witnessed over the last few weeks an unprecedented effort to use a coercive tactic in order to achieve a particular substantive result--in my judgment, a totally irresponsible and outrageous tactic; and, this is, to hold Government hostage by closing it down and, therefore, not only depriving the Federal workers of the opportunity to render service but depriving the American people of the service which they render. And I am going to develop here in a moment the impact this is having in the private sector. There is a tendency to think primarily about the Federal workers who cannot come to work and cannot get paid. And that is true, and that is creating a tremendous hardship and tremendous crisis in many, many families all across the country. But a similar crisis is being created in the private sector which interrelates with the Government in terms of its economic activity. The Government ought to be allowed to go about its normal activities while this struggle and debate over a 7-year budget plan takes place. There are very important fundamental differences over that budget plan. Very deep cuts in Medicare are proposed by some. There is strong resistance to that. At the same time, those who want the deep cuts in Medicare want to give large tax breaks. A lot of people do not see the sense in giving large tax breaks primarily at the upper end of the income scale at the same time that you are going to be imposing cuts in medical services on people with very modest means. In all of this there is an effort in effect to create chaos, to hold the Government hostage as a bargaining tactic; a coercive bargaining tactic. The majority leader yesterday here in the Senate, Senator Dole, when we passed the clean continuing resolution which would allow the Government to resume its normal activities for a temporary period of time--workers would be back at work, they could do their job, people could get services, workers would be paid--said, and I quote him: ``People have been gone from their jobs long enough. Enough is enough.'' Today, the Washington Post in an editorial said, ``They ought to reopen the closed agencies while they talk, since in fact they do finally seem to be talking. It's a nasty game, the shutdown, and it's gone on long enough.'' At the outset of that editorial the Washington Post said, and I quote them: Hostage-taking is an ugly business. It doesn't matter what the cause. Innocent people are seized and used as pawns; they become political trading stamps whose welfare is exchanged for things the hostage-taker could not win by normal means. That, even more than the mindlessness, the waste (in the supposed cause of economy in government), the inconvenience and the instances of outright harm to unpaid workers and unserved citizens alike, is what is finally wrong with the current government shutdown. The basic issue raised is to what lengths will people go to try to get their way? It is the hallmark of a democracy that you have to accommodate conflicting viewpoints. Democracy does not guarantee you that your way is necessarily going to prevail. It gives you an opportunity to try to persuade others. We have a constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances, and it requires restraint and good judgment on the part of decision-makers not to sacrifice the means in order to gain their particular end. Now, we have a classic case of sacrificing the means, the proper workings of democracy, in order to gain a particular substantive result. It has never happened before. Never before has the closure of the Government been used as a coercive tactic over substantive issues about which there are very sharp differences. But it is happening in this instance, and it is wreaking havoc. I ask unanimous consent that this editorial from the Washington Post be printed in the Record.

Mr. SARBANES. I also ask unanimous consent that at the end of my remarks three articles from the Post about the impact of this shutdown also be printed in the Record.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Would it be possible to speak for a couple of minutes after its adoption? I am quite content to have it go ahead.

Mr. SARBANES. Exactly.

Mr. SARBANES. Probably even more than that, I would say.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I just make the observation that I think all of the appropriations bills that were mentioned had legislation on an appropriations bill. Of course, if we did not do that to begin with, why, it would be an easier task dealing with the appropriations bills. The President took issue with some of that and vetoed the bills. I listened carefully to the majority leader who suggested maybe if some of those objections could be accommodated, it might be possible to work out the differences between the President and the Congress on that legislation. Therefore, there is a chance some of them might be enacted. And it seems to me that is a worthwhile path to explore. The other thing though is I do feel very strongly, as I indicated earlier today, that this closing down of the Government was without reason and without common sense. And I wish to underscore one point because I think it tends to get overlooked. There is a tendency to think of this in terms of the Federal employees who are not working. That is a very important aspect of it. But by not working, they are not providing services that are needed by the private sector. So it is having an impact, a far-reaching impact through our economy and through our country. In other words, people who want passports are not able to get those passports. You have people who planned trips for years. You have had business reasons to take such trips. Grants by the NIH have been put on the shelf, and so forth and so on. So there is a strong impact. People who contract with the Federal Government have found themselves unable to carry through and, of course, that is going to start affecting unemployment offices; they are closing down. That is not unemployment offices for the Federal workers. That is unemployment offices for everyone. So someone who gets laid off from some private job in some States now is not going to be able to find an open unemployment office with which to file a claim in order to obtain unemployment benefits in order to carry his family through a very difficult period. Now, obviously, the way to address it is the way it is being addressed here, and that is with a clean CR which brings the workers back in, pays them, they do the job, they perform the services, they meet the need, the private sector can then interact with the Government as it does, and we can move forward from there. So I again wish to thank the majority leader for moving forward with this CR, and I am hopeful that the House will accept it when it takes it up on tomorrow. Mr. ROBB addressed the Chair.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to commend the distinguished majority leader and all who have worked with him in bringing forth this clean extension of the CR with which my distinguished colleague from Virginia said it is not just the Federal employees affected, although they are clearly very much affected, but there is a large part of the private sector also impacted and impacted in a very negative way by what has occurred. This, of course, will carry through until the 12th of January and give us an opportunity to correct the difficulties that have existed thus far and hopefully avoid any difficulties from arising in the future. I think it will bring, at least for now, significant relief in terms of anxiety and apprehension and tension and turmoil to a lot of families which have been very negatively impacted. I very much hope it will be adopted on the House side when they consider the matter.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Very quickly. The Washington Post in a recent editorial said, and I quote them, ``Can you imagine a Fortune 500 company operating like this, if they had a dispute between their board of directors and their President and they sent everybody home.'' It is a coercive bargaining tactic that ought to have no place in the picture. As the distinguished Senator from New Mexico said, the regular operations of Government ought to be able to continue while we try to thrash out the very tough questions involved in this 7-year budget projection.

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 5 additional minutes.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. The Washington Post editorial said: Federal employees have every right to feel as if they are the real pawns in this sorry mess. One day they are proud and productive members of the Federal Government, protecting the health and safety of the Nation; the next, they are handed a slip of paper and sent home with no idea when they will be paid. That is no way to motivate a work force, let alone demonstrate respect for it. Let us pass a clean continuing resolution. Let the people go back to work. Let the Government function. And then let the debate over the broader budget, the 7-year budget plan, continue without this coercive effort to use the Federal employees as a pawn in that debate. Exhibit 1 [From the Washington Post, Dec. 17, 1995] A Shutdown's Other Costs There is more to the stalemate of the government than the failure of the president and the GOP to agree on a seven-year balanced-budget plan. The furloughing of federal employees exacts a terrible cost from a valuable work force. Nothing can be more demoralizing to men and women who look out for the nation's veterans, hunt for the cures to deadly diseases, keep our air and water clean, send out the Social Security checks and otherwise serve the nation in ways most of us don't think about, than to be told that despite their fidelity and contribution, they are really ``nonessential.'' That insult, being added to all the other guff federal workers catch in the halls of Congress, on talk shows and from television comics, comes as an undeserved kick in the teeth from their own government. Federal employees have every right to feel as if they are the real pawns in this sorry mess. One day they are proud and productive members of the federal government, protecting the health and safety of the nation; the next they are handed a slip of paper and sent home with no idea when they will be paid. That is no way to motivate a work force, let alone demonstrate respect for it. The daily payroll cost for the furlough of employees is no small matter--even if employees are paid retroactively for their days out of work. But there are consequences of the cavalier treatment of the federal work force that will be felt long after the government is back in business. A government that is in gridlock--worse yet, shuttered-- does little to bolster a political system already losing the public's confidence. It downright debilitates its own work force. As a furloughed federal economist said during the last interruption, ``Can you imagine a Fortune 500 company operating like this? If they had a dispute between their board of directors and their president, and they sent everybody home?'' And in addition to the effect on morale, can such interruption be supposed to be a help to the work they do? In an open letter to federal employees, President Clinton and Vice President Gore signaled their recognition of the shabby treatment afforded the federal work force: ``you remain good people caught in what Churchill called the `worst system of government devised by the wit of man, except for all the others,' '' they wrote. Good people--and they are-- should not be made to pay for the failures of their leaders. Getting federal employees out of the middle and back on the job is the way to respect them.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise to make once again a very strong plea for a clean continuing resolution in order to allow the Federal employees to go back to work and for the Government to function while the negotiations continue over a 7-year budget plan. The shutdown of the Government ought not to be used as a coercive tactic in order to reach a particular solution with respect to the 7- year budget plan. Unfortunately, that is what has happened. The employees are being used as pawns in this game, in this tragic game. And what is happening now is that you have over 500,000 employees who have been going into their offices and working, but who are not being paid for the period since December 16. You have another 260,000 employees who have been furloughed. So you have a total of almost 800,000 employees not being paid for doing their jobs. Of course, their inability to do their jobs affects citizens all across the country. There is an impact upon the private sector and upon millions of citizens. The NIH, which should be processing its grants to the private researchers, is not able to do so because people are on furlough. A number of States are slowing down the operation of their safety and health programs and their unemployment insurance programs because of the partial closedown in the Federal Government. You have a number of agencies that are not providing very needed services--the passport office, for example. A lot of people get passports for business reasons. Others have planned trips for long periods of time. All of a sudden, none of them can carry through on their plans often at great expense and inconvenience. The impact of this partial closedown on the Federal Government is disrupting the lives of millions of people, not only the Federal employees, but ordinary citizens who depend upon the Federal employees to provide them with important services. There are strong differences about the basic 7-year plan. Those differences ought to be fought out. But the employees in the Government ought not to be taken hostage as a coercive tactic in that debate, in that sharp difference over what the budget priorities ought to be. We have discussed those differences at length on the floor of the Senate, and I assume further discussions are going on, about the deep cuts in Medicare services, and in Medicaid services versus tax breaks for people at the top end of the economic scale. But we ought not to be holding hostage Federal employees to that debate. This week, people will receive paychecks that pay them for only 1 week, up until the 16th of December, when the last continuing resolution expired. Instead of a 2-week paycheck, they are going to get a 1-week paycheck. They will not get the second week because that was beyond the time of the continuing resolution, although over 500,000 of these employees were brought in to work. Although these employees were brought in to work, over half a million of them--and another 260,000 who have been furloughed find themselves in the same situation--they will get the 1-week paycheck, not beyond that. Then, after this week, unless the Congress takes action, they are not going to get paid. It is said that we are going to pass a provision which later, when we get a budget and an appropriation, will go back and pay these people. That is only decent and humane and just, it certainly should be done. But what are these workers to do in the meantime? There seems to be an assumption on the part of many Members of the Congress--maybe it reflects their own particular financial situation--an assumption that people somehow have money stashed away that they can simply draw down on. So when the paycheck does not come in, it does not make any difference in their standard of living. That is not true for a great many people. Most people need a regular paycheck in order to make car payments, house payments, tuition payments--to meet their ordinary living expenses. This is particularly true of people at the lower and middle grades, but it applies throughout the Federal service. What is being done to dedicated employees is an absolute outrage. It defies all reason and all common sense. There is no way, rationally, one can justify what is now happening and it clearly flouts common sense. The Washington Post, in a very strong editorial--and I ask unanimous consent the editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. I commend the Senator from Virginia for that statement. I know how hard he has been working at this issue. I think it is very important that we pass a clean continuing resolution. People should be put back to work and they should be paid. If you bring them in but do not pay them, you still are creating a financial crisis in their lives. I know the Senator is most sensitive to what people are going through and I appreciate his efforts.

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield on that point?

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I want to thank the distinguished Senator from North Dakota for his very strong statement. I know how keenly he has followed this matter. I also want to thank the distinguished Senator from New Mexico for his very thoughtful analysis. He made some extremely important points about the workings of the American constitutional system. We have a system of separation of powers and checks and balances. That means that one branch cannot simply abdicate itself from assuming a measure of responsibility when sharp policy differences confront decisionmakers. There are sharp policy differences over the components of a 7-year balanced budget. One approach would make a cut of $270 billion in Medicare and give tax breaks of $250 billion. There are many of us who think that is a wrong set of priorities, that we ought not to be giving the tax breaks and, by not doing so we would not be making deep cuts in Medicare. That is an issue that needs to be argued out among the Members of the Congress and between the Congress and the President. The President has stated he wants to move to a balanced budget, but he does not want to do it at the sacrifice of important priorities involving Medicare, Medicaid, health care for our citizens, involving educational programs, the opportunity for young people to go to college, involving environmental matters, in terms of safeguarding our air and water and protecting and enhancing our environment. So there are sharp differences over priorities. Many of us regard the proposal to make sharp cutbacks in the level of services for those programs as a radical proposal. In any event, no matter how one resolves such issues, the closedown of the Government ought not to be a coercive tactic that is permitted. In other words, workers are being taken financial hostage in order for one side to get its way on a set of policies. There are millions of citizens who are not getting services that they require. It is impeding the functioning of the private sector, of the private economy all across the country. The private sector is not able to carry forward as it otherwise would do because the Government is not providing certain important services which everyone agrees need to be provided. In addition, the punishment that is being inflicted upon those who work for the Government is extremely unfair and unfortunate. I do not know what people assume about the ordinary person's ability to meet their financial obligations week to week and month to month. I really ask people all across the country to stop and think for a moment: If you cease to be paid, if you were not getting your salary check, your paycheck, how would you meet your obligations? There are some people--I think a limited number--who could handle that situation without any difficulty. They have lots of savings, they have lots of accumulated wealth put away and they would simply draw down on it. But that is not true of the ordinary citizen, and it is not true of the ordinary Federal worker. They now are confronted with what amounts to family crises. Over half a million of those workers have been coming in to work. They have been called in. They have been working, but they are not getting paid. Another 260,000 have been furloughed. They are not getting paid. The answer to this is, of course, for the Government to start up again under a clean continuing resolution while the budget discussions continue and allow the Government to function and provide its services to allow its employees to be paid; not to hold them hostage as part of a coercive strategy in order to achieve one's way with respect to the broader budget question. Very important budget questions, but we ought not to be using this tactic in order to coerce the opposite party into submission to a set of budget priorities about which there is sharp disagreement. So I hope that in short order we will be able to pass a clean continuing resolution that allows the workers to come back to work, allows the Government to open up and allows the workers to be paid. There is another proposal discussed last week to bring them in, but they would not be able to do anything because they would be precluded from incurring new obligations--in other words, the Government would not really perform its functions--and at the same time the workers would not be paid. Some of the employee groups have gone into court asserting bringing them in to work and failing to pay them violates their constitutional rights. I do not know what the outcome of that judicial proceeding will be, but it is very clear that you are inflicting tremendous personal and family harm on people who are in no position to meet their obligations if you cease to provide them with their regular pay. So I hope very much that we will stop this practice, cease this use of the Federal employees as pawns which has put them in a state of turmoil and apprehension. Let these dedicated people go back to work, let them be paid, and let the citizens of the country receive the benefits of the services that they are dedicated to providing. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. BREAUX addressed the Chair.