National Park Service Operations, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, and United State Holocaust Memorial Museum Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the Republican shutdown. Of course we support funding for our national parks. But the House has not had that opportunity because Republicans couldn't even advance their own Interior bill out of the committee.

Why is opening parks now more important than investments in job training centers that are dependent on their expected allotment of funds, or allowing all of our food inspectors to continue to protect the American food supply?

Today's bill doesn't even include funding for essential firefighting efforts for the Park Service. Funding one budget item at a time, while doing nothing about other critical services, is no way to fulfill our constitutional responsibility to keep the government running or to grow our economy.

The bill we are considering is nothing more than a Republican ploy. It would not be necessary if Republicans had not been so reckless throughout the budgetary process, forcing us into a shutdown.

We could end the Republican shutdown today if the majority will only allow a vote on the Senate-passed bill to keep the government running, which includes the funding levels Republicans support and would be signed by the President.

Pass the bill today, and the couple can get married at the Jefferson Memorial, and the 200 patients who would have been admitted to the NIH clinical trials each week will not be turned away.

The House majority apparently can't take the heat from the fire they lit, so now they have put forward this reckless political attempt to shift blame for the shutdown. End the shutdown now.

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