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Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the shutdown, as my colleague, the senior Senator from Minnesota, just did. I am grateful for her comments on what is happening to people in Minnesota, the direct adverse impact of this shutdown on their lives. We have all seen it. We have all experienced it.
I will be referring to specific testimony from people who wrote me letters, but let me just highlight one experience I had the other day at a food bank in Central Pennsylvania, just miles from our State capital--a food bank that serves 27 of our 67 counties.
I was talking about how this shutdown could end. The President wanted the shutdown. He got the shutdown, but he could also end it. Prior to the discussion we had, behind us, they had an entire table full of food items that the food bank and others in that region of Pennsylvania were delivering to Federal workers, especially to TSA agents, who cannot afford food because they are working but are not being paid. It is hard to comprehend that. It is hard to comprehend that so many veterans around the country are, once again, serving their country by serving in the government as they served in combat or in the military; yet they are being left out in the cold, so to speak-- sometimes literally--but are, obviously, being left out when they don't have paychecks.
So this is real life. We debate bills and budgets and appropriations here in Washington. We have debates on the floor and debates and discussions in the hallways, but for these folks, this is real life. I will just point to, maybe, five examples in Pennsylvania.
Adams County, which is in the southernmost part of our State, where Gettysburg is--just on the Maryland border--is not a big county by population. Here is what one individual who is married to a Federal worker wrote. I will just quote her in part.
She writes:
We are expecting our first child this summer and, prior to December 22, were excited about the future and potential of 2019. Now we are anxious, sad, and angry, not knowing where the money will come from to buy necessities for this child, let alone medical expenses related to birth and daycare.
She goes on to write later in the letter:
We are now in real and serious danger of losing our home and our vehicles. We will soon have to choose between buying groceries or paying for the electric bill.
She goes on from there. She is one Pennsylvanian in Adams County.
Here is one from Cambria County, which is in the southwestern part of our State.
This individual wrote: ``My husband is a Federal employee who has been furloughed.''
She goes on to write:
We have a son in elementary school. It is about time for spring sports sign-ups, but we don't know how we are going to pay our bills or buy groceries. It is our son's birthday in less than 2 weeks. We canceled his birthday party to save some money.
That was from Cambria County, PA.
The third one I will highlight is from Delaware County, which is one of the big, suburban Philadelphia counties. It is a big population county.
Here is, in part, what this individual wrote: ``My in-laws are selling their home and cannot go to settlement because the FHA will not close a mortgage for the buyer.''
That was among several things they wrote in the letter. In the interest of time, I will not read all of it, but we hear these stories all the time of people not being able to complete the work on a mortgage because of the impact on the FHA.
Here is one from Montgomery County, which is also a suburban Philadelphia county.
This individual wrote:
I am a law enforcement park ranger for the National Park Service. . . . I am the sole provider for a family of four, to include two young children. Not knowing when I will get paid again is putting undue stress on the entire family.
That word ``stress'' keeps coming up either directly in these letters or by implication. Over and over again, we hear of the stress this shutdown is putting on families across America.
The last one I will highlight is from Warren County, which is in the northwestern corner of our State. It is a much smaller population county than were the two suburban Philadelphia counties I just mentioned of Montgomery and Delaware.
Here is what this individual wrote from Warren County:
Both my wife and I are federal employees working for the U.S. Forest Service. We are also both veterans. We will be using our savings to live off of and charging food to our credit cards if we must.
It goes on and on, and I know the Presiding Officer has seen the same thing. We have all seen and heard much about this. There is not enough time tonight to go through every letter.
This is what has to be the priority of all of ours. We have to be responsive to these cries for help, to be responsive to Americans who are just asking us to open the government so they can be paid, so they can make ends meet, so they can pay for groceries, so they can pay their mortgages--or to even have a mortgage in some cases--so they can pay for basic necessities, and so they can sometimes even just pay for birthday parties for their sons. Over and over again, we hear these stories.
As my colleague from Minnesota made reference to, I was encouraged that, today, we had two votes. There was a likely expectation prior to the votes that they wouldn't get enough to pass, but at least we were voting. At least we were voting on one measure that one side favored and were voting on another measure that my side of the aisle favored. I was also encouraged that five Republicans voted for the Democratic proposal, which is very simple--to fund the government, to open the government, and add disaster assistance for emergencies from natural disasters. The lives of people are adversely affected by so many natural disasters, but this is also, of course, an emergency--funding the government so as to make sure that workers have their pay and to make sure people are served by important programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Of course, we could make a long list of programs that are important to people's lives.
In the case of the so-called SNAP program--what we used to call food stamps--you are talking basically about children, seniors, and people with disabilities. These are most of the people who get benefits from the SNAP program. They are only guaranteed help from that program through February. There is no certainty about March. There is no certainty about April or the forthcoming months. It is just one program that serves millions of Americans that has already been adversely impacted because of the shutdown.
Whether you are talking about a mom or a dad who is a Federal employee or whether you are talking about someone who needs the help of the Federal Government--people who we have said over many generations deserve that help--in either case, it is unacceptable to them, and it should be unacceptable to us to not have the government open. We have lots of time to debate many issues after that, but priority No. 1 has to be to open the government. Then we will have a lot of time for debate on a range of issues.
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