Default Prevention Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MANCHIN. Madam President, I am very proud to be a part of a group who truly put their country first. I have been here probably a shorter period of time than most of my colleagues--not quite 3 years. I think people know I have been a little bit frustrated at times, if not quite frustrated. I heard stories about how the Senate used to work and that when the going got tough, the Senators really got going. I have not seen much of that in the last 3 years.

We had a dichotomy of Senators--Angus King, my dear friend, who is an Independent from Maine, seven Republicans led by Senator Collins, and our Democratic colleagues--come together and play off each other's strengths. They did not play off of their egos at all.

Two weeks ago I could not believe the self-inflicted pain this Congress put upon the people of America by shutting down the government--also coming on the brink of a financial calamity, if you will, and not being able to pay our bills. I have watched businesses and individuals get into financial problems before. Financial problems can come in many different ways, but basically you have early warnings and can step in front of that so you can restructure your spending, restructure your habits, and get yourself whole again--it takes a while--or you can wait until it hits you, and then you have to foreclose or go bankrupt, and it is almost impossible to get yourself out of it.

This was really congressional-made. There may be times when we have pressures put upon us as a country where we will have to do extraordinary work to keep ourselves afloat, but this is not one, and it should not be made because of political dysfunction.

I saw our colleagues playing off of the strengths each person brought to the group, and it got stronger and stronger each day. We faced the shutdown that we thought was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary and should never have happened, and then we were looking at facing a financial meltdown, if you will, the insolvency of our country, and that could not be tolerated.

As each person played off the other to try to help make this come together--I think Senator Collins explained it so well--we were able to have a piece of agreed-upon legislation that had a tremendous framework and good template that was presented to leadership here in the Senate. I applaud both of our leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, for taking that constructively and working with it. They worked together to try to make the best possible piece of legislation, and we encourage our colleagues in the House to accept that legislation.

I am hopeful for a large vote in the Senate. I am very much hopeful for that. I am hopeful that our colleagues in the House will accept that in the spirit of a bipartisan agreement we worked on. When we were doing this, we considered the House and what would be acceptable and palatable, but, more importantly, we took into consideration the American people and what they wanted us to do and why they sent us here.

In the spirit of the Senate, I am proud to see the Senate rise to the occasion and work the way I heard it used to work. I was able to experience that in the last 2 weeks, and I am proud to have been a part of that.

I thank all of my colleagues on the Republican side in both the Senate and the House. This is truly a time when America rose to show its best. Now we have to make sure we complete this.

During the negotiation we found out why we could not get to a budget conference. This bill will have a mandatory budget conference that has to report back and go back to some regular order. That was important for all of us to agree on. Everybody said there will be some criticism because of the short time period. We have a better framework than we have ever had in order to fix and repair the damage that has been done and address the uncertainty that will be lurking if we don't do something.

I am very pleased and proud. I thank Senator Collins, Senator Murkowski, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Pryor, Senator King, and Senator Heitkamp, and everybody who has worked so hard to make this happen. Again, I am proud to be a part of an extraordinary group of people who put the country before themselves.

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