Mr. President, here we are again. On Monday, September 30, five days from now at midnight, absent some agreement and cooperation between the parties in the Chambers here in the Congress, the entire federal government will begin shutting down. Here we are again, another day, another fiscal crisis, another politically manufactured crisis–another politically manufactured crisis that is threatening to tear at the economic fabric of our whole country.
It would be hard to believe if it were not totally, completely believable. I have been in the Senate now just under three years but this is my third of these crises. I was actually up in the chair presiding that night back in 2011, when we narrowly averted a shutdown, just minutes before funding expired. I was here with all the other senators on New Year’s Eve this past year where we stopped just short of going over the fiscal cliff.
Here we are again. From shutdown to default, from the debt ceiling to the fiscal cliff, now back to threatened shutdown and another default crisis weeks away and with, of course, unemployment still standing above 7 percent–7.3 percent.
In my home state, Delawareans don’t understand how we keep ending back up in this place. We have a saying in Delaware that our politics are dominated by what we call the Delaware way, which means doing what is right even when it is hard. It means coming together to make tough choices, Republicans and Democrats listening to each other and finding principled compromise.
It means being civil and playing by the rules, putting what is good for our people ahead of what is good for our politics. It does not look to me as if we have been able to muster much of that Delaware way here in Washington.
Last week the Senate considered the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill. Energy efficiency is about as commonsense and nonpartisan as you can get. It is not about fossil fuels or renewable energy, it is about making smarter choices and reducing our energy consumption.
The bill had support on both sides of the aisle. It was supported by business and labor and the environmental community, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. A very broad range of folks and organizations all over our country endorsed that bill.
I myself did work in energy efficiency when I was in the private sector at a manufacturing company and then again when I led Delaware’s largest county as county executive. I saw the real impact energy-efficiency technologies and strategies did have on the bottom line, for the private sector and public sector, for families and businesses, and it is significant.
There is so much opportunity to make a real difference for our economy, for our planet, for our communities in energy efficiency. That Shaheen-Portman bill gave us a chance to tap into it. It would have given millions more Americans a chance to benefit and was scored at creating 136,000 new jobs–but we blew it.
Instead of debating energy policy, taking up and amending and reforming and passing that bipartisan energy efficiency bill, the Senate was then dragged down into a petty partisan political battle over the Affordable Care Act, a law that, by the way, was debated in both Chambers and passed, litigated before the Supreme Court and upheld, was central to the last presidential election and was sustained.
I am not going to debate the merits of the Affordable Care Act at enormous length again. It is law. It needs to be modified. It needs to be amended so it can work more smoothly and more effectively. But, frankly, the law needs to be implemented. Every minute this Chamber spends reliving the settled debates of the past is a minute we are ignoring the 11 million Americans out of work, the 31,000 Delawareans currently looking for a job.
Each minute this Chamber spends on a futile effort to strip middle-class Americans of their access to affordable health care is a minute we are ignoring so many challenges: infrastructure, a generation of students ill-prepared for the challenges of the future, communities ripped apart by tragic, senseless gun violence–there are so many other challenges and tasks before us. It is insanely frustrating.
Is this what we signed up for? Is this why all of us worked as hard as we did to get here, knocked on doors and campaigned across our states for months and months? Is this it? Is this governing?
If Congress spent half as much time on manufacturing policy and on manufacturing jobs as we seem to spend on manufacturing political crises, our country would be in far better shape. It cannot pass laws, but Congress has become very good at manufacturing crises.
I am not running for president and I don’t have to impress the Tea Party so maybe I am missing something here. But we do have to be better than this. We just have to. There is too much at stake for our states, for our country, for our families, for the economy, for the world.
This morning the Steering and Outreach Committee had a dozen economists come in and offer their insights on what would happen if the government really does shut down five days from now. If we do, then, default on our national debt the next month, what would happen to the 11 million Americans still looking for jobs? What would happen to our resurgent American manufacturing industry and the half million jobs that have been created there? Their answers were not encouraging–in fact, depressing, really.
What was clear is that these political showdowns in this Chamber exact a real cost on our economy. They hurt the ability of business owners to plan ahead. They inject incredible, unneeded uncertainty into our markets. They generally erode our nation’s credibility and leadership on the world stage. But we keep ending up right here.
One of my constituents, John Henderson from Frederica, DE, wrote me last week and said:
“The strength of our economic recovery is on the line and government’s ability to make people’s lives better is in jeopardy. Congress needs to confront our problems responsibly, but when some lawmakers dig in their heels and threaten to seriously damage America if every one of their demands isn’t met, our Government can’t function. This isn’t the time for a game of chicken. It’s time to govern.”
John, you are right. Mr. President, he is right. This gridlock, this repeated manufactured crisis environment is embarrassing.
I am on the Budget Committee, and under the leadership of our Chair, Senator Murray, we passed a budget earlier this year. Not only did the Senate budget responsibly reduce the deficit, not only did it fairly replace the sequester, but it actually invested in economic growth. We took it up here on the Senate floor and passed it here, too, so not just out of committee but out of the Senate. We stayed up all night voting on amendment after amendment, for hour after hour, and in the end it is one of the most functional things we have done this year. The Senate passes a budget, the House passes a budget, and then we come together to reconcile the differences. That is how it has been done for 200 years. And this year, finally, after years of criticism that we hadn’t passed a budget, we had our chance to return to regular order.
So there we are, ready to go, budget passed–and nothing. House Republicans will not even come to the table and a few Senate Republicans are blocking the door. They literally will not even come to the table to negotiate and resolve our budget differences and lay the groundwork for moving forward. It is insanely frustrating.
Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. He was not wrong. I believe at this point the House has repealed the Affordable Care Act 42 times. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
I am on the Appropriations Committee and, under the able leadership of our Chair Senator Mikulski the committee has passed 11 appropriations bills. The House Appropriations Committee has passed 10 of theirs. We took up one of these vital appropriations bills that allows the Senate to work its will and to form and shape federal programs and federal spending. Earlier this summer we took up one of these appropriations bills, the bill to fund the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. But Republicans on this floor were so afraid of returning to regular order, of having a responsible, reasonable, regular working process to move forward on spending on this government and our economy, it was blocked. It was blocked, prevented from even being debated.
I will ask again: Is this working for anybody?
Back in June of this year the Senate passed a bipartisan farm bill. Great work was done by Senator Stabenow, Chair of the Agriculture Committee, along with her ranking member and senators from both side of the aisle. The Agriculture Committee did significant work to reform American farm policy, such as moving away from commodity subsidies and toward crop insurance. That alone would have saved taxpayers $23 billion. We all hear that is important. We need to reduce our spending and make our programs more effective. This was a great bipartisan bill. It would have modernized our agricultural policies and strengthened programs that help farmers, ranchers, and small business owners, and created jobs.
House Republicans will not negotiate with us on that bill either. They passed a bill that guts the nutrition assistance program, food stamps–cuts it by $40 billion, but will not work with us on a full farm bill. The current law also expires at the end of the month. If we do not pass a modernizing farm bill by the end of this year, our nation’s agriculture policies will revert to those of the 1940s.
If it sounds familiar, it is because we are in the exact same position on the farm bill as last year. Is this working for anybody? It is certainly not working for America.
Delawareans, whom I hear all the time, are enormously frustrated. I hope we are able to reach a deal and I hope we are able to keep the government running. I hope we come back next week and refocus on our economy and refocus all this energy on manufacturing and jobs and on manufacturing jobs, not on manufacturing crises; helping American businesses grow and helping our private sector create jobs.
Americans deserve better than this. They deserve better.