Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the crisis we have. I guess I ask my Republican colleagues: Please, don't shut down our government. A shutdown will hurt all Americans--our businesses, our middle-class families, our servicemembers who could see their paychecks delayed. It will hurt this economy. Eight percent of mortgages are FHA guaranteed. None can be issued that are FHA guaranteed starting tomorrow. Housing is one of our largest industries, and it has been on its knees. This will put it on its back. IRS checks that are mailed, where the refund is mailed back, will stop. That is billions of dollars that would be circulating in the economy that will not happen.
We Democrats have been listening to the people. We want to avoid a shutdown and have met all of the Republican demands on the spending side.
Last night at the White House Speaker Boehner said to the President: If you go with me, it is $78 billion in cuts. That will satisfy me.
The President said: We will get to that number.
We have moved in every direction Speaker Boehner has asked. We believe there should be cuts. There is tremendous waste in government. I think any Democrat who ignores the lesson of those who voted, the lesson of the last election, makes a mistake. The people did want government to cut out the waste and to shrink, but they didn't say cut everything. They didn't say use a meat ax. I didn't have a single person tell me--and I met a whole lot of tea party people--to cut cancer research, cut loans to students who are going to college because the American people have wisdom. Cut the things that are wasteful and hurt the middle class but grow the things that help the middle class achieve a better life. That is what the President has tried to do when he said: We are going to out-educate, out-build, out-innovate. That is what we are trying to do.
There are a lot of tough cuts in our proposal, some that I don't like. Every Member on this side will be able to find things they seriously don't like, but at the same time we have gone to a level, about as high as we can go, that doesn't cut our seed corn, our future, a growing economy for our people and their children.
On cuts, we are in a good place. So why didn't we come to an agreement? Why, after Speaker Boehner offered a number and the President accepted, why are we still here today worried about a shutdown that will hurt so many? The answer is simple: the so-called extraneous riders. These add-ons, which have nothing to do with deficit reduction, are standing in the way. Why are they standing in the way? Because a minority of the House--perhaps even a minority although a large number of Republicans--insists that they be there. They are the hard right of the Republican Party. They are the same people who have said: We cannot give an inch on their H.R. 1 bill, which did cut our seed corn, did cut loans to colleges and cancer research. Now they say they have to insert these extraneous riders dealing not with abortion--the Federal Government can't fund abortion because of the Hyde amendment--but rather about women's health, about who, not how much, should get the payments to do chest screenings and blood tests and cancer tests for women. That battle has been raging for a long time, decades. It has nothing to do with reducing the deficit.
So why is it there? Let me show why on this little chart, this little pictorial representation. Speaker Boehner has said: ``No daylight between Tea Party and me.''
Let me repeat that because these are his words: ``No daylight between Tea Party and me.''
Does he have the exact same views as the tea party? Obviously not, but he is pulled by them. He has a choice. He can listen to the tea party and shut down the government, or he can take the very difficult--and I admit it is difficult; I believe Speaker Boehner is a good man; I like him; I think he is a decent, honorable man who is caught between a rock and a hard place--alternative which is to take the mantle of leadership and tell those on the hard right they cannot run the government completely.
They will have influence--they already have--but they cannot run the government completely. They certainly can't impose their social ideological agenda on a budget process, frail enough as it is. These riders are the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes the shutdown.
Speaker Boehner is trying to say today it is not the riders, it is the budget numbers; but that is belied by two facts: No. 1, he offered a number to the President last night and the President accepted, $78 billion in cuts. No. 2, if it isn't the riders, as my colleague from Washington State said, take them off the table. Tell the tea party and others that this is not the time or place. There will be a debate on this issue. We can guarantee that. Even if we didn't want it to happen, it would. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would make sure. But not here and not now; not when continuing the government with all the ramifications is at stake.
What we have is a flea wagging a tail wagging a dog. The flea is the minority of House Republicans who are hard right. The tail is the House Republican caucus. The dog is the government. That flea is influencing what the dog does. More than influencing, right now it is determining. It is sad.
Leadership is tough. Frankly, when either party goes to the extremes, they don't do the right thing. When Republicans go to the hard right, when Democrats go to the hard left, my experience is they lose politically. Much more importantly, they do what is wrong for the country substantively. We are a country that governs from the middle. We are a country that believes in compromise. We are a country of what the Founding Fathers profoundly weaved through the Constitution: checks and balances.
It says two things: When the people want change, a new group will come in, and they will certainly have an effect. Our government, our structure of government the Founding Fathers created, is not ossified. They also said they won't control everything. That is the beauty of our government.
We in the Senate are the cooling saucer. That is what we are doing here. We are performing our function. It is a function that the Founding Fathers wished us to perform, some of whom, I might note, come from the State of Virginia. In any case, we have a serious issue ahead of us.
I say to Speaker Boehner: Please, tell the tea party folks they are going to get some of their way but not all their way. They will not get their way on these extraneous riders related to women's health. The battle for whether the government shuts down goes on inside Speaker Boehner's head.
When people ask me: Are we going to shut down?
I say: Look inside Speaker Boehner's brain and see what is going on there. I am sure there is a lot of torment and tumult. I sympathize with the situation.
This is a time for leadership, and if leadership emerges, this government, on which so many people depend, will not shut down.
I yield the floor.