Relating to Considerations of Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the ranking member.

Mr. Speaker, since the very moment the Affordable Care Act was passed, we have heard a massive campaign of misinformation and distortions from our Republican colleagues. From the beginning, we heard about death panels. Then we heard it was going to be the government takeover of health care. That earned them the independent PolitiFact lie of the year in 2010.

Tonight, Mr. Speaker, on the floor, we just hear massive distortions, and what's shameful is that they want to use that now as the cover to shut down the United States Government. They want to use that so that, tomorrow, millions of Americans can't sign up for or access affordable care. Members of Congress--all of us--we have affordable care, but, tomorrow, you want to deny that affordable care to millions of Americans and take it away from the millions of Americans who already have protection as a result of the Affordable Care Act. That is shameful.

Now, this notion that they are going to go to conference on the continuing resolution is a fig leaf that's not going to get them any political cover. The only way to have kept the government open tonight, which is now closed, was to take up the Senate's continuing resolution and fund the government. Yes, then we should go to conference on the budget.

Mr. Speaker, we have been trying to go to conference on the budget to negotiate our differences since March, when this House passed a budget and the Senate passed a budget. In fact, back in April, I and my Democratic colleagues introduced a very simple resolution saying that the Speaker should obey the regular order and appoint budget negotiators here from the House to meet with the Senate. What did the Speaker do? Nothing. He blocked the ability to have those budget negotiations.

We actually voted on it three times in this House. My Republican colleagues voted against the opportunity to appoint budget negotiators. In the United States Senate, what happened? On 18 occasions, Senator Lee and other Republican Senators blocked the effort to go to budget negotiations.

Now, Senator McCain said that was insane for Republicans in the Senate to do because he pointed out that our Republican colleagues claimed that they wanted to work on these budget negotiations all along. They said ``no budget, no pay.'' What they forgot to tell the American people was that they didn't mean a Federal budget. They meant the House passes a budget and the Senate passes a budget, but then they were going to block the effort to negotiate the differences.

Now, why would you block that, Mr. Speaker? Because, when you go to a budget negotiation, you've got to compromise, and you've got to meet the other party halfway. You've got a Tea Party right wing in this House that refuses to compromise. So what did they say? We're not going to go to conference. We are going to vote three times against negotiations. In May, in June, and in July, no negotiations.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

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

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the gentlelady.

So what do you do if you don't want to negotiate, if you don't want to compromise? You back the country up against the wall, and here we are with that strategy.

The idea is, since you don't want to compromise in the regular order, let's try and get what we want by threatening to shut down the United States Government. If that doesn't work, we are going to make sure the United States Government can't pay its bills on time so that we can enact our radical agenda that way because you're not willing to do it through the regular process of compromise.

So nobody should be fooled about this idea of trying to get fig leaf cover on going to conference on this. We should have voted on the bill and kept the government open. It is a shameful day for the United States Government and especially for this Congress.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source