Making Continuing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, where is America now? We have an economy in recovery. The Dow was at 7,900 when George W. Bush left office. It is over 15,000 right now. Our deficit is heading downward. Unemployment is still high, but jobs are coming back. But, as we make this progress, people continue to struggle, and they expect us to put together a business plan for America, here on the Senate floor, and work with the President--work together as Democrats and Republicans--to put that plan together for every American family.

What is the tea party Republican response? It is to shut down the government, to stamp out signs of our fragile economic recovery, to send the signal that America can't perform the most basic job of government--and that is to pass a budget.

What is driving these tea party Republicans? I know all about these tea party extremists. I served in the House of Representatives with them. I served over there for years. They live by the Republican tea party paradox: They hate the government but, paradoxically, they have to run for office in order to make sure the government doesn't work, and that is where they are today.

They sent us a bill from the House and they know it won't pass. This is a bill to nowhere, and nowhere is where the tea party Republicans want the government to go.

The tea party Republicans want to repeal ObamaCare. I say to those who want to repeal ObamaCare, to those who do not like ObamaCare, and to those who like ObamaCare: We have had that debate. We debated here in Congress. The bill passed. It was signed by the President. It was held up by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is the law. It is time to stop playing games and to let the law work. But that is exactly what the tea party Republicans are afraid of--that the law will actually work.

Shutting down the government for ObamaCare is like canceling the World Series because your team didn't make it. ObamaCare is the law. We can't cancel the government. We can't cancel the World Series. We have to accept the reality that it is the law. We had an election. But what we have here are the mad hatters of the Republican tea party in Congress who have decided that their approach to government--to the old, to the sick, to the needy, to every single principle of the United States of America that we stand for--it is off with their heads for all of those people who depend upon these programs in our country. We are living in an absurd
``Alice in Wonderland'' Republican tea party world here.

This government has to work for the American people. Instead, what they are about to do, over this weekend, is send another Maalox-moment-for-the-marketplace signal to the credit markets of the world that the United States cannot be depended upon to operate a government, to pay its bills, to respond to the needs of the families within our own country, to meet its obligations not only here but around the world.

And those families who are dependent upon a paycheck from the Defense Department? They are wondering, along with the families who are dependent upon a Federal helping hand, whether or not they are going to get that help over the next week, over the next two weeks, over the next month.

I will just give my colleagues one final example. The National Institutes of Health budget--well, it is really the national institutes of hope. That is what we give to families who have somebody with Alzheimer's, with Parkinson's, with cancer, with heart disease--is being cut and cut and cut and cut. It is being cut at the same time that last year we spent $132 billion worth of taxpayers' money on Alzheimer's patients in our country. We can't cut the money for the cure and simultaneously say we want to cut the money for taking care of those who have the disease. We can't have it both ways. That is what this nihilistic tea party approach is bringing to our people.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The time of the Senator has expired.

Mr. MARKEY. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for yielding. I hope the tea party Republicans come to their senses.

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