Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. Kaptur. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the bill before us.

The United States has been the world's shining example in how democracy can work.

Our history shows that the nation is stronger when we come together to govern and solve the serious issues that face our country.

Yet, tonight we find ourselves on the precipice of a government shutdown. Make no mistake, the bill we considering at this late hour essentially ensures that the government will shut down.

We cannot continue to ``govern'' by staggering from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. The madness must stop.

It seems we have learned nothing from recent history. To use just one example, during the fiscal cliff in December of 2012, the Dow fell more than 400 points or 3.1 percent.

These sudden drops in the stock market have real impacts, particularly for individuals who have substantial amounts of their family's hard earned savings in the market for retirement.

Our economy is still in the process of recovering from the Great Recession. We should be debating ways to spur economic growth, not debating a shutdown that will slow economic growth.

For the entire country, the Republican shutdown proposal will have real immediate negative consequences.

The impacts will be felt in our economy and in the services that the Federal Government provides, which the taxpayers pay for.

According to the Administration:

Nearly 1.4 million active duty military personnel deployed at home and overseas defending our nation's interests would not be paid for their work until after the shutdown ends.

Hundreds of thousands of Federal employees would be immediately and indefinitely furloughed, and many Federal employees and contractors that continue to work would not be paid during the shutdown.

Housing loans to low and middle-income families in rural communities would be put on hold, as would start-up business loans for farmers and ranchers.

SBA would stop approving applications for small businesses to obtain loans and loan guarantees. In a typical month, SBA approves over $1 billion in loan assistance to small businesses.

All facilities and services in our national parks would be closed, as would the Smithsonian, impacting the hundreds of thousands of people that visit these sites daily.

This would have severely negative impacts on the surrounding local communities that rely on the revenue generated by travel and tourism to these destinations.

Important government research into life-threatening diseases, environmental protection, and other areas would be halted.

The government would stop issuing permits to conduct drilling operations on Federal lands, and would stop or delay environmental reviews of planned transportation and energy-related projects, keeping companies from working on these projects.

If this CR were to become law, defunding the Affordable Care Act, not only would it put health insurance companies back in charge of our health care, it would end free preventive services that 105 million Americans including 71 million Americans in private plans and 34 million seniors in Medicare have received.

The list of those who would lose under this bill is too long to enumerate. The Affordable Care Act is law. Elections have consequences.

We all know this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate and the President has said he would veto it should it reach his desk. We are wasting our time. Instead we should pass a clean CR and get on with the business of the American people.

In closing, I urge my colleagues to vote against this measure and urge my Republican colleagues to accept reality and not shut the government down.

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