Continuing Appropriations

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank the majority leader for the statement he just made.

It is hard to believe that we are a little over 3 hours away from shutting down the government of the United States of America. When you hear about this happening in foreign countries, you think: It is a shame they just aren't as stable and strong as our great democracy. Yet here we are, facing that possibility just a few hours from now, and it is through our own fault. It is the failure of leadership.

I will tell you what we have done in the Senate. I think it is the right thing. We passed a clean CR, a clean budget bill. No political strings attached. None. We could have attached the immigration bill, the farm bill, a lot of possibilities there. None. A clean budget bill for America's government for the next 6 weeks, we sent it over to the House and said, just vote for this, and we don't have to shut down the government. They have said ``no'' repeatedly. And they are about to send us the third effort of the House, and it too will be defeated because they are obsessed with ObamaCare--obsessed with the Health Care Reform Act. More than obsessed. They are living in mortal fear of what is going to happen starting tomorrow.

As we will see, across America they are going to announce the insurance exchanges in every State. People who have never had health insurance in their entire lives will have a chance to buy it. Some of it will be affordable for a lot of families. Some of it will be the first chance a family has had to buy health insurance.

There was an article I read over the weekend in one of the Chicago papers about a family raising a child with mental illness. As a consequence, they have been disqualified every time they tried to buy health insurance. Nobody will insure them because their child suffers from mental illness. Guess what. As of tomorrow they will get a list of health insurance plans in their State they can buy. And it is in competition--in a marketplace--and they can choose from many different options. In my State of Illinois, there are 54 different options that we can choose from for our health insurance. It means for that family which has lived without health insurance because of the mental illness of their son, for the first time in their lives they will be able to buy health insurance.

If one has ever lived as a parent with a sick child without health insurance, you will never forget it as long as you live. I know of what I speak. I was there and I remember it, and I will never forget it. When you finally get health insurance, you can breathe again knowing that, if something happens, you will get help in paying those medical bills. For some of these families, for a lifetime they have never had a chance.

That is why the Republicans want to stop ObamaCare. They don't want these exchanges to be announced. They don't want people to see these options. They know what is going to happen: 40 million uninsured Americans are going to take to this because it gives them the first lifeline they have ever seen when it comes to health insurance. That is what it is all about, and that is why they fear it and hate it so much. It is going to work. It is going to give peace of mind to families. And we are never going back.

We will change some of these provisions in this health care reform. Of course, we will. Anything this big is going to be changed, as it should be. Wisdom and experience is going to give us some ideas of how to make it better and stronger and work more fairly. That is why the Republicans are so determined to stop it tonight, before it can go into its first phase of advertising marketplaces tomorrow.

They are going to fail, again. For the third time they are going to fail in just a few days with this House approach with strings attached.

And there is one other element here. I am glad the majority leader raised it. People think that Members of Congress have these gilded health insurance plans, and the honest answer is we do have a pretty good health insurance plan. We go through what is known as the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Eight million Federal employees and their families, including Members of Congress and their staff, buy into it. It has been around for decades. It works well. My wife and I can choose from nine different health insurance plans in Illinois as Federal employees. We choose the big Blue Cross plan, and we pay the highest premium for it. But our employer pays a share of the premium. This is not a radical idea. One hundred fifty million Americans have exactly the same arrangement. They get their health insurance through their work, and their employer pays a portion of the health insurance premium.

Now come the House Republicans and they have come up with a new idea.

First, the requirement that Members of Congress and their staff buy insurance through the marketplace. It is OK with me. I have taken a look at the marketplace plans. They will cover my family just fine, thank you.

Now they add the kicker. But, the Federal Government cannot pay for any of the premiums. Why? Because we know, under the health insurance marketplace small businesses with fewer than 50 employees can provide an employer contribution to their employee buying through that marketplace. It is in the law.

So Members of Congress aren't being treated any differently when our employer--the Federal Government--pays part of our premium in the marketplace. That is all that the law says. They want to stop that. It isn't because of the injustice, because others are getting the same benefit and we are not getting special treatment. It is because they want to find a way to create some pain in the process.

Senator Reid talked about 16,000 congressional workers and their family members. I am sure that number included their family members. They want to single them out and say that they get no employer contribution for their health insurance. Shame on them for coming up with this idea.

To deny hard-working people--whether Members of Congress or our staff--the basic protection of health insurance without digging deeper into their pockets, is that their idea of making this a fairer, more just society? I don't think so.

We are going to reject what the House is about to send over, and the clock is ticking. It will be a few hours left before midnight. There is an answer to this, though, an easy one.

Right now, Speaker Boehner has in his power the ability to call a bill on the floor that will avoid the government shutdown. It is a bill passed in the Senate, a bill with no political strings attached, a simple extension of the government's budget for 6 weeks. He can do it. He can stop what otherwise will happen tomorrow morning, when agencies all across our Nation give notice to their Federal employees: Go home. We are shut down. It means hundreds of thousands of Federal employees tomorrow will be sent home and not paid for their day's work, and the things they do to make this a stronger country and to keep our government working will just come to a stop.

The greatest Nation on earth shutting down its government on October 1, 2013. It is totally unnecessary. It is a manufactured political crisis by tea party Republicans. We are hoping that some of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle--conservatives, moderate conservatives from all over the Nation--will join us.

Let's spare this embarrassment for America. Let's allow those Federal workers to go to work tomorrow as they should and provide our country the services it needs. Let's get ready for health care reform and the marketplace, and let's let the American people be the judge as to whether it is right or not. I think it will be. But trying to stop it in its tracks is just a fool's errand, as one of the Members of Congress on the Republican side described it.

If the Speaker would call the spending bill that passed the Senate for a vote tonight in the House of Representatives, we can be spared this government shutdown.

Madam President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. REID. Madam President, will my friend withhold for a question?

Mr. DURBIN. I withhold.

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Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Nevada that we have 50,000 Federal employees in Illinois, and we expect the majority of them to be sent home tomorrow. They are working in places such as the Rock Island Arsenal. Some of those employees will have to go home tomorrow morning. These are men and women who make the armaments America needs to be safe. The same will happen at Scott Air Force Base and at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. That is the reality.

I might also add to the Senator, because of my responsibilities on the Appropriations Committee I was briefed this afternoon about the impact of a government shutdown on the intelligence agencies of the United States.

I am not at liberty to give a number, but it is an amazingly large percentage of those working in intelligence agencies tomorrow who will be told to go home. These men and women are watching out for our safety and security, to guard against terrorism every single day. Because the government shuts down, they will be sent home. Not all of them; the military personnel involved will continue. But the nonmilitary personnel, many of them, thousands of them, will be sent home from work tomorrow. For what purpose? To make a political point about the power of Congress to shut down the government?

It doesn't make us any safer as a nation. It certainly doesn't enhance our reputation. And it is not helping to build our economy. As the Senator from Nevada knows, we are making a recovery. It is slow. We have been told by the Business Roundtable, not necessarily an ally of the Democratic Party, that this tea party Republican strategy will be disastrous in terms of economic growth. I don't know if the word was calamitous or catastrophic or cataclysmic--whatever, it was one of those. They told us to do this will be damaging to this economy. Yet the House Republican leadership is hell-bent on getting this done, shutting down this government tonight.

All they have to do is take what has passed the Senate, our budget proposal that has passed the Senate, and call it for a vote. If they call it for a vote, it will pass and they know it, and Speaker Boehner and the tea party Republicans live in fear of that possibility.

I hope they come to their senses. This is about more than a political bragging point, more than tomorrow's headline. We can avoid shutting down this government.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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