Government Shutdown

Floor Speech

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, this last week must have been quite a civics lesson for the members of the Tea Party who thought that they could shut down the government--and, in fact, shut down the government--and nobody would miss it. But soon they discovered that there were serious problems with that.

Now we see one bill after another: to restore the NIH because they found they stranded cancer patients and other people in need of their health; to restore the WIC program because they found out that the newest born infants in this country would be without nutrition, the veterans programs because they found out our veterans would be stranded, the assistance to go to school would be cut off.

Our national parks, they never thought those communities would be impacted by the national parks. They didn't care about that. They shut them down. But they were here asking for relief.

They found they needed the weather service as the hurricane was approaching our Gulf States. They needed FEMA. They needed someone to organize the evacuation routes in case it became a full-blown hurricane.

The CIA, they discovered they laid off 70 percent of the assets within the CIA. This goes on and on and on and on.

Welcome to America, a big, diverse Nation where we all need one another at one time or another.

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