Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan). (Mr. NOLAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democrat leader.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have one further speaker. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, if my colleague has no further requests for time, I am prepared to close.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Today is a truly shameful day in the distinguished history of this House. Far from the noble mission that some from the other side may claim, what is before us is an extreme--and extremely cynical--attempt to extract a ransom from the American people. They have issued their demands knowing full well they will not be met. Yet they are taking another step towards a government shutdown in order to deny 30 million uninsured Americans health care. Time has run out. We are down to our last chance. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on today's rule and the underlying legislation, and ask once more that we be given the opportunity to vote on the Senate bill, a clean bill, that can go directly to the President. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me be clear: the proposal before us is nothing but another way to run out the clock. I think while we're speaking here, in just a little while we will find in 20 minutes--21 minutes, because I think we will go 1 minute after midnight--that this government will shut down. This amazing government that we are supposed to be overseeing-- America, the United States--can't manage its business and shows that to the rest of the world over the fact of trying to stop the bill you hate that is the law of the land, that has already been verified by the Supreme Court as to its constitutionality and where our President won election handily when this was the main idea. I don't believe anymore that this is the product of a few people with strange ideas. This is the Republican Party. I think people who watch the news, jaded--I do; every idle moment I have to be finding out what's going on in the world--were quite stunned to watch a Republican conference over, and the Members coming out absolutely gleeful, many of them expressing glee--one of them said that he was almost giddy with joy about closing down the House. Earlier this evening, I saw after the 2010 elections some new Members who were saying on the news that their intention was to shut down the House. Well, they've done it. At any time we could have taken up a clean bill for the Senate. All we had to do was vote for that Senate amendment resolution and pass that here, which could have been done easily with bipartisan votes. It would then have gone to the President of the United States. Government workers could sleep easier tonight if we had done that. They wouldn't have to worry about paying the rent, or being able to buy groceries, or being able to pay the tuition for their child in college. What we are doing to the psyche of America--not ``we.'' I'm not going to say that again, the universal ``we.'' What Republicans are doing to the psyche of America will be a long time in healing. I think the absurdity knows no bounds. We want to say again that if anybody has any mistaken notions that the Democrats were involved in it, there are no Democrats' fingerprints on any of these bills. I'll say that again: Democrats had no input at all at any time on what any of these bills were going to say in the greatest matter before the House of Representatives to keep the government going, to meet our obligation to fund the government. In fact, by cutting out the people's Representatives on my side of the House, almost half of the people in the United States' voices were stilled throughout this whole process. The only time we got to talk was when we were up here, and we were trying to run and catch up to see what was going on. We had no idea what this was about, that this was coming tonight. We were able to pick up bits and pieces maybe off the floor, and people passing around some things that maybe they heard. But the whole Democrat side has been shut out--not just on this measure, but on everything in the world that we have done in this term and last term as well. Now, I don't want anybody to forget that because everybody is going to yell if something goes wrong here, they're going to try to blame it on us. It's not on us. I have never seen anything like this. In addition, for well over 6 months this Democratic side has begged, cajoled, done everything they could to try to get this House to appoint conferees and to go to conference with the Senate of the United States on bills that each Chamber had already passed. We couldn't do the farm bill--couldn't do much of anything. And I said earlier today one of the reasons is sequestration. So we had only gotten two appropriations bill. They've run out of money, and there was no way in God's Earth we could have ever done the 12 that we needed to do. But even that hasn't caused any idea of changing what we're doing. And we want to be a part of that. We would like to take the 6 weeks-- imagine, on one hand, we are appointing conferees for a 6-week measure when we wouldn't do it for the budget of the Federal Government. Now we would like to be as much a part of it as we can while we're trying to deal with the debt limit and certainly to do away with sequestration that even my friend, Mr. Rogers, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, said was far too draconian and that the government would be seriously underfunded. But tonight, here we are, tragically here. Let me see now, it's 15 minutes away from time where it will be useless; so I am not going to say anything more about we could take up another bill, we could pass it, it would go to the President, he would sign it, and we could avoid it. It's simply too late. How could you, with any common sense at all, think that, as we have moved to this point without changing from the left to the right with moving ahead, throwing up every kind of thing on a clean CR that would kill it when it arrived at the Senate. We are hearing--and I hope it's not true--that when we get to the debt limit in about 2 weeks, that the Christmas list that they want to pass--everything that they wanted all their lives and couldn't get-- again, holding the country hostage, is what we have ahead of us. Now, given a clear choice between serving our country and serving ideology within these ranks, the majority has chosen to stand against the country and shut the government down. Make no mistake about it, there is going to be a lot of hurt. At this point, all I can do is urge everyone on our side of the House to vote ``no'' for no other reason than because of the rules in the House being broken and regular order being so far from reality. The rules of the House say that any Member can call for a vote on the Senate bill, but this rule takes that away from everybody but the majority leader. Only the majority leader can call for that vote. Very little is left on our side except to vote ``no'' and to express our great displeasure and hope to goodness that when this is over and all that pain is out there, that we can move as quickly as possible to try to right this dreadful wrong that is about to land on the American people. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, it is midnight, and the great Government of the United States is now closed. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am compelled to say that, if the Members of Congress are going to be treated like everybody else in the country, we would be the only group that's forced not to take our employer's health insurance. I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on the Budget, who has tried valiantly to do away with sequestration.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, although what we're doing here is an exercise in futility, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, who has been doing a wonderful job.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), our side of the Texans.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Let me advise my colleague, Mr. Speaker, that I have one further request for time, and then I am prepared to close.