Providing for Consideration of H.R. 367, Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2013; Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2009, Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013; Providing for Proceedings During the Period From August 3, 2013, Through September 6, 2013; and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2879, Stop Government Abuse Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, what is particularly frustrating about what we are doing here today is that this is a colossal waste of time. We are taking up five bills that are going nowhere in the Senate. The President has already issued veto threats on all of them. These are just press releases that the Republican National Committee has decided would be good things for Republican Members to release in their districts. None of this stuff is meaningful. It's going nowhere.

We are also repealing the Affordable Care Act for the 40th time. When the gentleman says that the Affordable Care Act is not popular, I will remind him that we had a referendum on the Affordable Care Act--it was called a Presidential election. The last time I checked, Mitt Romney was not in the White House. I think he's out on his yacht somewhere, but he's certainly not in the White House.

So we are doing this meaningless stuff, and we have 9 legislative days left before the end of the fiscal year, before we approach a government shutdown, and we have people on the other side of the aisle--people running for President on the other side of the aisle--publicly bragging about how they want to shut the government down.

Now, I have great respect for the gentleman from Oklahoma. I think he is a reasonable, rational, good Member of this Congress. I wish there were more like him on his side of the aisle, but there aren't. In fact, the Republican Party is being ruled by the fringe right-wing elements of that party--those who are pushing for a shutdown, those who are saying compromise on nothing, those who helped defeat the farm bill, those who, quite frankly, are insisting on budget numbers that are so unbelievably low for things like our infrastructure that they had to pull the Transportation-HUD bill from the floor yesterday.

We ought to be fixing sequester. Chris Van Hollen, on our side of the aisle, has an alternative to sequester. We ought to vote on it. My Republican friends haven't allowed a vote on an alternative to sequester all year--nothing. We ought to go to conference on the budget so that we can actually get a budget so that we can have reasonable numbers on our appropriations bills that we can pass and be proud that we're doing something to put people back to work. We are doing nothing in this House. We ought not go on recess until we do the people's business.

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